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5 Digital Storytelling Assignments in the Classroom

Digital storytelling takes advantage of the vast array of today’s technological options to tap into storytellers’ creativity. This technique uses animation, video, music, images, and other multimedia to compile a narrative. The following 5 examples of digital storytelling in the classroom demonstrate that it can be used for its surface purpose: to develop narratives or practice a foreign language, as well as in content courses to present and discuss abstract concepts and material.

1. Creative writing assignment

Individually or in pairs (if this is a first digital storytelling assignment, pairs is probably a better idea), students tell a particular type of creative story, per the assignment. Assignments can include telling a story about a personal experience that they have had and embellishing it so it is partially fictional, or something completely fictional. They can also write something creative as a spin-off or supplement to another class concept, such as telling a fictional story about a day in Socrates’s life to supplement a unit on studying some of his philosophy. This is also a good assignment for a language learning class, where the telling of the story itself is the goal, rather than the ideas that are contained within the story. Target genres can also be assigned if you like, such as humor, adventure, drama, or fantasy.

Rather than writing the entire story and turning it in in written form, students develop the script, then illustrate the story and narrate it as appropriate.

For this assignment, students will employ a variety of software options to tell a creative fictional or personal story. One option is to have the story be no more than 95% narrated, and can be much less than 95% narrated if you wish. The additional portion of the story should be told nonverbally using images on the screen. A minimum of 3 different software formats should be included (e.g. animation, PowerPoint or other presentation software, images, music or other sound track).

Tip! Most digital storytelling assignments involve the use of computer speakers. Take care of this in advance, #2 and #3 from this list are great for classroom use.

Suggested requirements:

Final video length: 2-4 minutes.
Time for completion: 1 month

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2. Science assignment

Digital storytelling assignments do not have to stop at personal or creative writing. These types of assignments can add flair and creativity to other subjects as well, and present concepts in new and interesting ways. Such creative presentations of topics within the disciplines will help students acquire the material, for both the group of students constructing the story as well as the recipients of the story. For digital storytelling within the disciplines, it is recommended to assign the story to small groups rather than individual students, because these are more challenging assignments and more contributors should make for higher quality production.

In small groups, students use digital storytelling to define and describe a particular scientific concept.

cell growth and division
habitat and diet of a certain animal species or species family
skeletal system growth, wear, strengthening, and deterioration
Anything that has a process is a good topic for a digital storytelling assignment, as is anything that needs description, such as a certain animal’s habitat to support its diet.

Suggested requirements:

Length: 4-6 minutes
Full script is due one week after the assignment.
Full story is due one month after the assignment.

This can also be used for larger concepts, and extended to a quarter-long project if you like. In this case, the total length should be 12-15 minutes.

3. Math or Statistics assignment

In small groups, each group is assigned a particular statistics concept to present. All groups can approach the same concept if it is particularly difficult and students are generally struggling with it, or each group can present a different concept.

Students must creatively develop a story to illustrate the concept. This is a large extension of a word problem. Students create a story, with characters, action, and character problems to solve, to illustrate the need for the concept and the particular use of the concept. Statements of “why only this will help and no other approach” should be included. This will include statements of other options and why those other options are infeasible for resolving the problem at hand.

develop a scenario for which regression statistics is necessary, and no other statistical test will resolve the problem. Include statements of why no other statistical test will resolve the problem
develop a scenario requiring linear algebra to resolve. Include statements of why no other approach will meet the needs of those in the situation.
Students should use a minimum of 3 different software tools in their presentation.

Length: 2-4 minutes (you don’t want the students getting bogged down in the narrative, as will likely be the temptation with a longer assignment. So, keeping it short is designed to keep the focus on the concepts, with the narrative supporting the concepts.)

Full final product is due one month after the assignment.

4. History/anthropology/culture compare/contrast assignment

The social sciences are an easy and logical extension of the digital storytelling technique since the social sciences are inherently about people. Thus, it’s a short jump from the personal or creative fiction narrative to illustrating a concept in the social world. History can easily be told using this technique, as the students make a certain set of events in history come alive in the present via digital storytelling. Similarly, studies of faraway lands and their people can be brought into the classroom using digital storytelling. This enlivens the topic for the learners, as they are participating in both the story construction and in viewing the story being told by their peers. It can be a highly effective way to teach these topics and achieve and retain student engagement in areas that may be traditionally low in terms of student interest.

Individually or in pairs (especially for younger learners), students discuss two particular related topics via digital storytelling. The assignment is to create a character or cast of characters, and tell the story through the character(s) developed, as if those characters were living and experiencing these events first-hand.

Compare and contrast the social mores of 19th century Victorian England with those of 21st century Elizabethan England.
Compare and contrast Islam with Judaism.
Compare and contrast the rise of the Ottoman Empire with the rise of the ancient Chinese Empire
Compare and contrast Roman architecture with Bavarian architecture, circa 20th century
Compare and contrast the art of the Renaissance with the art of the Baroque period

Suggested requirements:

Length: 5-7 minutes (longer if the assignment expectations and timeline are larger)

5. Argument assignment

Argument writing is one of the most difficult types of writing, and argument storytelling one of the most difficult uses of the digital storytelling technique. This approach requires a great deal of creativity and a lot of thinking. First, the arguments need to be crystallized and solid, then creativity needs to be explored to determine ways to present those arguments via digital storytelling tools. It is recommended to have students peruse samples available on the internet to gain a clearer understanding of what an argument would look like in a digital story.

In groups, students illustrate a particular perspective and make a compelling argument using digital storytelling techniques. The script of a digital story argument will not likely look exactly like an argument paper will look. An argument essay has one essential audience member: the grader. A digital story, however, has numerous audience members. The argument needs to be presented in a way that is compelling to all audience members.

One way to achieve this is to create a main character. Through that character, the events that transpire involving that character, the character’s experiences as shown in the story, and expressions of the character’s thoughts and feelings, the argument can be conveyed.

Full script is due 10 days after the assignment. (this script is a little more challenging, so a little more time to develop it is in order)

Assignments can be given to students individually, in pairs, or in groups of 3-4 students. Because this technique strays beyond the traditional assignment, it requires a good deal of outside-the-box thinking. Thus, the more challenging the assignment, the more students should be involved.

Assignments can be short, with 2-3 week deadlines, on a single concept. They can also be mid-range, giving a month or so on a larger or more complex concept, or even quarter-long assignments that emphasize core course objectives. As students gain experience in developing digital stories, the assignment time can be reduced.

The narrative is the most logical use of the digital storytelling approach. However, there are as many ways to use digital storytelling as there are genres of writing. Indeed, digital storytelling techniques can be used for any type of presentation, on any subject. Below are the genres of essay writing, and digital storytelling can be adapted to any of these. Due to the challenges of reducing an abstract argument to images and video, the argument and critical genres especially may be more effective with groups rather than as individual assignments, at least for the first assignment.

Narrative (the cleanest, most obvious connection for digital storytelling)
Descriptive
Compare/contrast
Cause and effect

Any writing style can be adapted to the digital storytelling genre, with a little creativity.

A great way to develop digital stories is to use Microsoft PowerPoint together with iSpring Suite. This PowerPoint add-in that allows story creators to turn their PowerPoint presentations into an engaging video, mobile-ready interactive presentations, or more. It also makes it possible to create a story with a voice over like the one below.

Digital storytelling is the modern version of the classic narrative, and can be used in any discipline or course, and with any genre of essay writing. In the classroom, digital storytelling assignments offer advantages that include heightened student engagement in the subject, creativity, problem-solving, and likely interaction and group dynamics skills, not to mention increased literacy with software and exploration of new software. Whether assigning each group different topics or the same topic to all groups, students benefit immeasurably from using this approach to the material – just remember to be respectful of the learning curve, which can be quite steep (and frustrating and time-consuming) when approaching new software.

If you have any other examples of digital storytelling in mind, feel free to share your ideas in the comments below.

If you liked the article, please let us know by clicking the Share button.

If you have any ideas what kind of e-Learning topics you’d like to see discussed, feel free to leave a comment; we’re always happy to write new content for you.

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Leaders That Listen Public Speaking Curriculum

Storytelling guide.

This toolkit contains guiding principles for storytelling, background reading on how storytelling can foster inclusion and equity, storytelling templates, storytelling practice activities, activity and project ideas involving stories, storytelling project planner and rubric, and how to start a podcast. Hope these resources inspire you and others to tell more stories!

Categories legend.

Resource 1: Storytelling: The Identity of a Leader

This essay provides an overview of the goals and elements of powerful, purposeful storytelling.

Resource 2: Making Storytelling Inclusive and Equitable

This essay describes how stories promote inclusion and how leaders can facilitate equitable conditions for storytelling.

Resource 3: Stories About Stories: A Message from the Author

The author tells her personal experiences with students and why stories can promote student self-expression.

Resource 4: Getting Stories Started: For Educators and Facilitators

This one-pager contains 6 personal checkpoints for facilitating opportunities for storytelling.

Resource 5: Getting Stories Started: For Speakers

This one-pager contains 6 personal checkpoints to help speakers come up with ideas for stories.

Resource 6: Getting Stories Started: For Listeners

This one-pager contains 6 personal checkpoints to help people be better audience members when listening to stories.

Resource 7: Story Warm-Ups

These 10 warm-up activities can be used as fun ways to practice storytelling in only 8-15 minutes.

Resource 8: Storytelling Cheat Sheet: Tips for Language and Delivery

Use this cheat sheet for quick tips for strong story beginnings, endings, and overall delivery.

Resource 9: Storytelling Speech Template

This format shows one way to weave stories into formal speeches that connect to broader messages.

Resource 10: Self-Advocacy Story

This format shows how to tell stories that advocate for personal needs and issues.

Resource 11: Sharing the Stories of Others

This format shows how to speak up for other people’s experiences in a caring, ethical way.

Resource 12: 7 Tips for Talking about Yourself in Interviews

These tips describe how to use stories effectively in job interviews.

Resource 13: Small Steps for Educators: Using Storytelling in Schools

This resource provides a list of ideas for incorporating storytelling practice into classrooms and schools.

Resource 14: Activity Examples: Facing the Fear Podcasts and StorySlams

Incorporate storytelling into short assignments by using these two standards-based examples (which include a rubric and ballot).

Resource 15: Class Project: “Me As a Speaker” Identity Performance

This resource provides an example of a longer 2-3 week class project showcasing student identity through storytelling.

Resource 16: Storytelling Rubric

This rubric can be used for a class project or giving feedback on storytelling as a whole.

Resource 17: Community Change Idea: Youth Voice Podcast

This extensive checklist outlines what is required to start a podcast.

Resource 18: Project Sketcher

This planning tool and calendar help organize public speaking project goals and prioritize specific skills and milestones.

The Changing Story: digital stories that participate in transforming teaching & learning

(25 reviews)

Linda Buturian, University of Minnesota

Publisher: University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing

Language: English

Formats Available

Conditions of use.

Learn more about reviews.

Reviewed by Dolores Flamiano, Professor, Media Arts and Design, James Madison University on 5/16/22

Comprehensiveness rating: 5 see less

The Changing Story gives a remarkably thorough overview of digital storytelling and covers the bases from project conceptualization to scaffolding to assessment to peer feedback. There is much to admire in this book, from preliminary chapters grounded in educational theory to later chapters that get into the practical nuts and bolts. There are a couple of features that I find extremely informative and helpful—at times even inspiring. Next semester, I plan to implement digital storytelling assignments in my classes. When I do, I will be turning to The Changing Story, in particular the exercises in the Appendix and the chapters on scaffolding and assessment. As a professor with a humanities background teaching in a program with a strong focus on applied skills and media technology, I often feel like a fish out of water. At the same time, I want to help students apply their digital skills to critical analysis and visual literacy development. The Changing Story appeals to me because it takes a “big picture” approach to digital storytelling. In other words, the focus is on learning through digital storytelling rather than learning to use digital tools. To me, this is an important distinction, and one that makes this book truly comprehensive.

Content Accuracy rating: 5

Very clear and accurate focus on digital storytelling from cross-disciplinary, education-based, pedagogical perspectives. I appreciate the short videos sharing the experiences of students and teachers who have used digital storytelling assignment for different purposes and in different disciplinary contexts.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 5

The book’s dual focus on digital storytelling and climate change (a through line in many of the video examples) makes it feel highly relevant and of-the-moment, but not in a trendy or frivolous way. I also applaud the authors for paying attention to the process of digital storytelling and not espousing any specific technological tools or platforms.

Clarity rating: 4

The writing is clear, straightforward, and accessible. It might seem basic for those already conversant with digital assignments, but for someone getting started, it seems just right.

Consistency rating: 4

Uneven, in my opinion. The chapters are consistent in terms of following a format clearly described in the introduction. The student examples are somewhat inconsistent in terms of the production lengths (8 minutes feels too long) and technical quality.

Modularity rating: 4

I’m not accustomed to rating modularity, but will do my best. In terms of the ability for separate chapters to stand alone, then I think that certain chapters, notably the Appendix, could function quite effectively as independent modules.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 5

The book is thoughtfully organized so that each chapter builds upon the previous one. The chapters flow well together.

Interface rating: 3

This was somewhat uneven, in my opinion. For example, when reading the e-book online, I found a few cases of orphan last lines or headings. In terms of the videos, I found it distracting to be taken to YouTube whenever clicking on a video interview or student example. I would prefer to have the videos embedded in the e-book rather than having to go to YouTube.

Grammatical Errors rating: 5

The book was error-free as far as I could tell.

Cultural Relevance rating: 4

Somewhat uneven overall. The examples of student work were somewhat diverse and inclusive. There were videos highlighting people and projects in South America and other parts of the world. On the other hand, the interviews with students and teachers did not have much diversity.

I appreciate the opportunity to read and review this book. I have been looking for a helpful primer for introducing digital storytelling into my media literacy and critical thinking classrooms, and this is the best textbook that I have seen so far. It provides a solid rationale for introducing digital storytelling as a way to enhance and enrich teaching and learning. Equally important, the authors often take a strong social responsibility and ethics perspective, which I admire and support. In this vein, I appreciate the attention to fair use when it comes to using images and music, as I think this is an area where students will need more guidance as digital storytelling becomes more pervasive in our educational landscape, which I think it will.

Reviewed by Vicki Pitstick, Director, New Student & Family Programs, Radford University on 1/7/22

Comprehensiveness rating: 4 see less

As a professional who has used digital stories in many ways and a certified Digital Story Facilitator through The Storycenter, I felt this book did a great job of explaining what digital stories are and different ways they can be utilized. The numerous examples of digital stories and students' reflections on their digital stories were wonderful, and the index/glossary was very complete with explanations and sample assignments. The one thing I wished the author would have discussed was the use of story circles when creating digital stories. This is a very powerful aspect of the process of digital storytelling that can elevate student learning and teach empathy, and although it takes time, that all professors may not have in the classroom, I do think it is a part of the process that could have been explained for those who might have the time to incorporate it into their teaching.

The author did an excellent job of providing clear and accurate explanations. Her viewpoints did not come off as bias, and she was able to portray a sense of flexibility as well as provide options for teaching a topic in a different way in her writing.

As technology becomes more and more a part of our world, providing resources to teachers about ways it can be utilized in the classroom is crucial. This is especially true if we want to keep our students engaged as much as possible. Additional examples and updates could easily be added to this textbook.

Clarity rating: 5

The numerous examples, digital stories, and exercises made the text an easy and enjoyable read.

Consistency rating: 5

The author is consistent throughout the book with her terminology and framework. She explained how each chapter would be set up and followed the format she described. Her use of backward design as a framework for the book illustrated the value of this pedagogy.

The text is written more of an instruction for teachers on how to teach using digital stories. There are aspects that could be pulled out for students, but it is mainly to help teachers with this pedagogical strategy.

The book was easy to read and flowed well.

Interface rating: 4

Not all links worked for me, but this may be a result of my own computer.

The book was very well-written and easy to read.

Cultural Relevance rating: 5

The beauty of digital storytelling is that it is a great tool to help people educate others about and celebrate their cultures. I did not find anything offensive about the text.

I believe the use of digital storytelling is very powerful and enjoy incorporating them into courses and other activities when appropriate. I appreciate that this book has added to my repertoire of exercises, examples, and ways to assess digital stories. I also appreciated the authors vulnerability and honesty about her own process as she continues to incorporate digital storytelling into her teaching, Well done!

Reviewed by Elif Guler, Dr./Associate Professor/Professional Writing Coordinator, Longwood University on 8/17/21

This book presents a comprehensive discussion of digital storytelling from its definition to examples of students’ digital stories to related scholarly research as well as tools (e.g., assignments and exercises) and other resources (links to instructional videos) for teachers to easily integrate "digital storytelling" into their curricula. However, some of the links provided for sample students’ projects no longer work (perhaps because those students chose to make the videos private, etc).

Content Accuracy rating: 4

The content is accurate. The only issue (error) is with the broken links that no longer work (there are several of those).

Relevance/Longevity rating: 4

The relevance is a challenging aspect with this kind of a text whose topic (digital storytelling) has something to do with changing technologies. The text does a good job of overcoming this challenge, Much of the discussion provides timeless guidance on composing digital works that would could be easily applied through different technologies -- even if those technologies were to change in the future. Still, the text might need updating every five years or so (which is indicated even by the sample links that can go obsolete in a short period of time).

The author presents the content in a very accessible, clear prose. The text flows very well and makes the reader want to continue reading. The text can be understood by any teacher at any level without knowledge of specific terminology. Any terminology used is defined and explained.

The text uses relevant terminology consistently. The chapters are also consistent within themselves in terms of their purposes. For example, chapters 1 and 2 provide a more theoretical discussion, while chapters 3 and 4 also provide practical models and procedural frameworks.

Modularity rating: 5

The text has been clearly divided into chapters and different sections that can easily be selected and assigned for students to read.

This text is clearly organized around definitions and discussions of theory on digital storytelling, practical tools for creating digital stories, specific examples, exercises, assessment devices.

The interface can get problematic at times; for example, it takes a while to get out of an example page and return to the corresponding chapter, sometimes. The reader can find themselves bumped back to the beginning of the book or the end of the book, etc. Also, some of the lines in some of the chapter pages seem to get cut off, so the reader might need to play with the browser window size to make all of the text visible.

The book seems to be edited well for grammatical correction.

The text presents a rhetorically conscious approach to culture and invites instructors and students to critical thinking thorough the exercises included in the chapters. Highly interesting sample works such as the "classroom as mandala" provides for meaningfully diverse content.

I'm definitely planning to integrate some of the assignments and exercises from this book into my digital writing course.

Reviewed by Sharon Head, Assistant Professor, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts on 6/3/20

This text is a comprehensive, concise, and highly readable introduction to the use of digital storytelling as a learning tool for both instructors and students. The author provides a solid theoretical background, exercises to use with students, and many powerful examples of the ways that her students and colleagues have used and learned from the process of digital storytelling.

The author provides content that is accurate and unbiased. Specific attention seemed to be paid to providing examples of digital storytelling that reflected a variety of cultural perspectives/voices.

Because the author refrains from discussion of any specific technology, this text will be "current" for years to come. There is a sense of timelessness about this content in the best possible sense.

This is a well-written and very readable text. I think that it could be easily used by instructors not just at the university level but in K-12 settings as well.

The author very clearly outlines her approach to the organization of chapters at the beginning of the book and follows that structure throughout. There is good consistency in tone. Use of short, meaningful quotes at the beginning of each chapter helps to draw the reader "in."

Text is arranged in an very visually appealing way. Lots of white space and headings/sub-headings that help the reader to see where they are and what lies ahead. No student should be able to make a complaint of TMDR (too much, didn't read) about any of the chapters or the book as a whole.

This text has a very clear organizational structure that progresses from definitions, to types/uses of digital stories, to very practical exercises, examples, and assessment tools.

Text is free of major interface issues; there were however issues with accessing the assessment rubrics.

No grammatical errors; well-edited.

Text is culturally sensitive and includes examples of digital stories from students and instructors who have a variety of cultural and/or experiential backgrounds.

I will plan to use this text as a resource for pre- and in-service K-12 teachers.

Reviewed by Carrie Oeding, Assistant Professor, Bridgewater State University on 6/1/20

I really like what the book covers and how it breaks down the steps to integrating digital storytelling assignments in your classroom. It's incredibly clear and immediately useful. In the "Types of Digital Storytelling" I would like to see a reference to additionally using the assignment genre to create arguments with digital storytelling. Right now the emphasis is on informing, explaining concepts, reflecting, and teaching others. A lot of students think research and writing means just reporting. Informing and explaining doesn't imply creating an argument. To specifically emphasize how to create an argument with your research or an argument using a concept you have studied, is a different, important objective for classrooms. I also would like to see a researched personal narrative assignment included in the "types." The reflecting section in Chapter 2 is geared toward students reflecting on their work. But to emphasize how a digital storytelling assignment could require research and personal narrative to create an interesting hybrid narrative would be useful for a lot of courses.

The book also does not break down specific questions peers can ask each other in the peer review process. This is a constant step of consideration and revision for faculty when scaffolding major assignments.

The book is steeped in useful experience.

The strength of this book is that its breakdown of these assignments are really flexible for almost any course and major. The guidance is still open enough to inspire you to consider what your current goals and themes are for the course, making the text very relevant and adaptable.

Easy to read in a useful way. I can get through the text quickly, find it all useful and know I can return to it when I want to build my own assignments or cite in pedagogy research. I would have liked to see, though, a section on teaching editing of video and photo essays. This seems like a key step in the learning process.

The clarity of the book is also stemming from its consistency. The consistent referral to the practice of a participatory pedagogy through the use of digital storytelling helped to keep the objectives in the forefront. The value of participation was present in every aspect of this book--from brainstorming to evaluation.

I like the links to the exercises within the textbook. You can keep following this scaffolding of exercises and still return to where you left of in the chapter.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 4

The organization makes it easy to jump around as well as read chronologically. I just wasn't 100% sound on the position of Chapter 5. I understand that loading this information in the preface would lose readers, but it read as coming in a little too late into the text.

Interface rating: 5

Easy to click and return throughout the book.

Very clear.

It's incredibly relevant to use with inclusive pedagogy. The text emphasizes the need for rhetorical analysis of images, a critical cultural tool, by organically integrating such analysis into the scaffolding of the exercises.

Very useful! A good primer for faculty who want to use digital narratives or multi-modal assignments in their classrooms. The textbook shows how anyone can adapt these assignments.

Reviewed by Catron Booker, Adjunct Faculty/Radio-TV-Film, East Tennessee State University on 4/17/20

The text is very accessible in terms of being easily readable for educators from a wide variety of backgrounds. The textbook seems to be more of an overview of digital media for a course in the humanities, American Studies, Environmental Studies, etc. that is interested in using digital media as an additional tool for research and/or for using narrative strategies to explore various topics that might other just be driven by data based analysis. The exercises located in the Appendix are very useful in terms of understanding how to integrate this approach into a curriculum. Nevertheless, I think it would be useful to provide examples of a completed (portfolio based) project that shows a process based approach in which a range of digital strategies are used to explore one topic such as water. I think this is what Chapter 6 could have displayed especially since it was rather brief. Chapter 4 is exceptional for offering concrete instruction on assessment strategies and the challenging nature of evaluating digital projects with comprehensive rubrics included.

High accuracy and error-free readability.

This textbook feels mostly up to date as of this reading, but the challenge with digital media is remaining up to date in a highly evolving digital landscape. The relevance of this book lives in the teaching tools it provides instructors already using digital media and/or wanting to acquire a solid pedagogical foundation with concrete project based results. In this respect, the content is incredibly useful. An Appendix that not only includes the exercises but also lists key terms would also be helpful for quick and easy reference of certain topics, terms, concepts, etc.

Exceptional clarity and highly engaging without technical jargon that can be daunting for those unfamiliar with the field.

Very consistent and highly useful in terms of constant referencing of core concepts.

There is a solid balance between visual examples and the text. I would have liked to see a wider variety of digital story examples other than video including, but not limited to, graphic based projects, art projects, sound based work, etc within each module.

The chapters easily build upon each other. It is definitely an invaluable teaching reference because of its organizational flow such that one would want to return to it again and again.

Many of the links did not easily open for me in iBooks to watch online. This is an important functionality issue that needs to be resolved and may be more an issue with iBooks than other software. One suggestion is to have the links all clearly listed in the Appendix and/or on a companion website which is what I eventually found via my own navigation.

Excellent grammatical quality.

I would have liked to see more racial/ethnic, cultural, economic and linguistic diversity from the student and faculty stories and interviews included.

Excellent textbook for digital media educators. Also, a more nuts and bolts chapter on the mechanics of editing would have proven useful. A chapter with references to open source editing software is a suggestion. And finally, while Chapter 5 is valid regarding the environmental and human impact of technology consumption, the chapter was not useful for teaching in practice. This chapter could have been more impactful by considering 1)How can students incorporate this awareness into their projects and/or lives? 2)How can one maximize the functionality of technology and/or take on a DIY approach in order to minimize the environmental impact 3) How can this challenge actually become a digital media story in and of itself?

Reviewed by Qazi Arka Rahman, GTA, West Virginia University on 3/26/20

The book does a good job of detailing the steps of digital storytelling. I have particularly found the organizational structures of the chapters helpful. The way of utilizing quotes, content, student work, faculty interviews, and footnotes does a good job in scaffolding concepts and cases that is beneficial for comprehending the entire process. The chapters themselves are pretty straightforward and provide enough cases to understand the challenges of such a venture in the real world.

The text seems accurate and relatively free of bias. The arguments are based on case examples and that is always a good strategy.

Given the time and its techno-centric focus, I think this is a very relevant book. Be in introductory composition courses or graduate level seminars, it cannot be denied that the demand for incorporating tech into teaching is increasing. The book addresses a timely issue.

The prose of the book is clear and jargon-free. It's a good strategy for a book of its kind. There are little in here that might seem difficult due to the language that has been used.

The individual chapters are very well organized and that helps the overall book to be consistent and coherent.

It seems it will not be much difficult to reorganize the book to fit a class. The chapters are subdivided into different segments and that is helpful.

The strength of this book is its organization. The chapters are divided into segments that slowly builds up the process for comprehension. The usage of faculty interviews and student works also help to understand the issues that might come for each segment.

The online reading interface is smooth enough. Although, I did face some issues while turning pages. On a few occasions, I have been taken to the first page while going through the book.

I have found no significant issues with grammar in this text.

It seems the text actively tried to be inclusive, which is a good thing. It also pulls from a wide range of disciplines.

The text is easy to read, well organized, and addresses an issue that is very relevant for the current times. I am looking forward to incorporating it for one of my future classes.

Reviewed by Mara Pierce, Assistant Professor of Art Education, Montana State University - Billings on 1/15/20

The text is wonderfully comprehensive. The work is inclusive of example assignments, sample student outcomes, and methods of curricular incorporation. I appreciate the focus on participatory culture and its inclusion as a pathway to community... read more

The author atypically includes a clear layout in the beginning that informs the reader of how they will encounter the content, which is beneficial to be able to identify sections most relevant to the immediate reader.

As is consistent with the topic of digital storytelling, the author also includes narratives of those who have participated in the process of digital storytelling learning. This creates a deeper connection for more audiences.

There needs to be much more information on the Fair Use and Copyright guidelines. To do so would inform students about artists’ rights and the work they put into their pieces, including films, the next iteration of digital storytelling.

Relevance, including appropriateness for educational level or course level - Comments Interestingly, this text is more relevant to instructors than teachers. However, as a professor of teacher education, it is relevant to my pre-service or in-service K-12 teachers who plan to teach digital media.

As an artist and teacher, I find immediate relevancy.

Text is clear and utilizes at-level appropriate vocabulary. Style is conversational, but informative.

Text is consistent from beginning to end.

The chapters depend on one another, but are linked accordingly. Ideally, when one piece of information in a latter chapter references an earlier one, it is cited and informs the reader where to find the previous information.

The chapter content scaffolds well beginning with a definition of the topic through methods of pedagogical incorporation to student assessment.

The interface is excellent. All links I attempted were active and footnote numbers have immediate links, which I also found impressive.

There were no discernable grammatical mistakes that interrupted reader flow.

Cultural Relevance rating: 3

The text speaks well to those engaged within a culture of research. There is information that sheds light on acts that are relevant to conducting research appropriately. What cultural aspect I would like to see more of is the connection of digital storytelling to various global cultures that use narrative as a way to continue traditions. Including those points of learning creates a dynamic that takes the concept of personal storytelling into a much large realm. I appreciate the inclusion of storyboarding as part of the storytelling culture. A connection to filmmaking is present through the link to an external site about filmmaking. However, it is not a primary source, which juxtaposes some of the content regarding the importance of first person resources. As far as references to cultures beyond the mainstream dominant, there is none. The lack of non-privileged cultural perspectives is shortcoming, especially with today’s diverse student populations.

The text is appropriate for a group of teacher educators, but seems to be more along the lines of a project guide than a full semester textbook.

Reviewed by Molly Bruce Patterson, Assistant Professor, Digital Archivist & Special Collections Librarian, Rhode Island College on 12/2/19

In The Changing Story Linda Buturian intentionally maintains a platform-neutral approach in her exploration of digital storytelling; she provides a pedagogical framework that can inform digital storytelling assignments across platforms and formats. In that sense, The Changing Story is comprehensive. However, aside from one teacher reflection that briefly discusses map-based projects, the examples and exercises offered in the text are almost entirely linear video narratives. These examples are drawn mostly from faculty at the University of Minnesota, who seem to share a similar approach to employing digital stories in the classroom. In that sense, the scope of the text is somewhat limited, but I don’t think this detracts from Buturian’s overarching goal to inspire and offer guidance to teachers interested in digital storytelling.

The content in The Changing Story is accurate and well researched.

Although digital tools and platforms are constantly evolving, for the most part The Changing Story will remain relevant because Linda Buturian’s exploration of digital stories is platform-neutral. The links to examples of student work will probably need to be updated over time, but as long as digital media is abundant in society, the core text of The Changing Story will offer helpful guidance on how to employ it in curricular design. However, readers will have to turn to other resources to find more specific information about technology and platforms for digital storytelling.

Linda Buturian’s writing is clear and she defines most technical or specialized terminology used in The Changing Story. However, because Buturian’s intended audience is teachers, there is an underlying expectation that readers have some basic experience and understanding of curricular design.

The Changing Story is informed by a cohesive pedagogical framework that emphasizes instructional scaffolding techniques. This underlying structure ensures that the text is internally consistent as it lays out the curricular building blocks needed to support students as they learn to communicate effectively through digital media.

The Changing Story is a guide for teachers interested in using digital storytelling in their classrooms. Because instructors are the audience, the text isn’t designed for direct use in the classroom, and the main chapters not modular in design. Each chapter builds off what preceded it, so it would be important for a teacher to read through most of the text in order to understand how to effectively incorporate digital stories into curricular design. Unlike the main body of the text, the appendix is more modular and provides many examples of exercises that a teacher might pick and choose from to use in the classroom.

The Changing Story is very well organized. The overall structure follows a logical order that first explains what a digital story is, and then explores different kinds of digital stories, how to prepare students with scaffolding exercises, and how to assess and evaluate digital stories. Each chapter concludes with links to examples of student work and a video of teacher reflections.

I encountered some issues with the interface, probably because I don’t normally read eBooks so I was using a free app on my phone. The main problem was the display of block quotes, which looked very nice in the online version of the text but did not render properly in the epub version. When displayed on my phone there were no quotation marks or any other formatting to distinguish quoted text.

I did not notice any grammatical errors in The Changing Story.

The Changing Story is very inclusive in its approach to digital storytelling. “Developing a culturally-inclusive lens for visual knowledge” is a stated goal of Linda Buturian’s scaffolding assignments, and she emphasizes the power of digital storytelling to foster intercultural knowledge. Many examples of digital stories in the text show students sharing diverse cultural experiences through their assignments. Not only is the text of The Changing Story culturally sensitive, but the author also demonstrates how digital stories can support culturally inclusive practices in the classroom.

Reviewed by Tracey Burrell, Director of Clinical Experiences, LSUS on 4/13/19, updated 5/6/19

The text is organized in such a way that it addresses the what, when, where, why, and how of digital storytelling. Content is supported by several student examples and teacher reflection. read more

The text is organized in such a way that it addresses the what, when, where, why, and how of digital storytelling. Content is supported by several student examples and teacher reflection.

The author infuses personal experiences with academic research to deliver a pretty accurate assessment of the power of multimedia as a learning tool.

This resource will be easy to update. The author does not mention specific names of multimedia programs, but focuses on the skills needed to develop a quality product.

Very clear and easy to follow.

Terminology was consistent.

The flow of the chapters supported student learning and teacher/instructor implementation.

Chapters are well-organized. The structure is consistent from chapter to chapter. The author uses various approaches to connect with different audiences (i.e., quotes, student examples embedded in chapter, teacher reflection at the end of each chapters).

Links were live. There were no navigation problems moving from text to video samples.

There were no grammatical errors.

There could have been more of a balance of representation, as it relates to student examples. Nevertheless, student examples that were included were a nice addition.

Reviewed by Candace Schlein, Associate Professor, University of Missouri - Kansas City on 12/8/18

A real strength of this book is how it provides definitions of different types, purposes, and scopes of digital story assignments. Furthermore, the author makes the most of the digital platform of this ebook by including a great number of samples of digital stories. Reviewing actual completed digital stories is extremely useful for breathing life into some of the concepts that are highlighted within the text. I also appreciated that the samples represented a number of disciplines. The text further does an outstanding job of including discussion of major considerations to take into account regarding assessing digital stories. Samples of rubrics and descriptions of assessments are also provided. The author encourages the use of backward design in shaping digital story assignments in terms of considering the student learning objectives for digital storytelling in the classroom. For this reason, the rubrics might be positioned earlier in the text. Building on the assessment focus of the book would be helpful. For example, some samples of student attitudes toward assessments appear within the assessment discussion. Including students in the assessment discussion from the outset of the assignment would be useful as well.

This book is well-researched and well-written.

The text provides information in concise chapters so that all pertinent information on digital stories is included in the book. However, the use of digital/ media samples to support components of the book really go a long way toward ensuring that the content is up to date. I would imagine that over time, as digital tools expand and media literacy in the college classrooms also develops, there would be a need to regularly update these samples.

The text is written in a very accessible manner. All key definitions are explained cogently. The actual samples further help to explain different concepts that are discussed. This is not a jargon-heavy text, and sections of it might be assigned to students who are working toward developing their own digital story assignment.

This book was carefully prepared and clearly organized.

This text includes several brief chapters. These chapters can be easily assigned throughout a semester to students. Alternatively, an instructor might be able to focus on portions of chapters within lessons and showcase some examples to students as a basis for whole class or small group discussions. Samples of discrete digital narratives may also be assigned to students for critical discussion about digital assignments and rubric samples might also be assigned to students as a basis for their own work to develop an assignment and rubric surrounding digital storytelling in class.

The text begins with definitions, builds toward distinguishing types of digital stories, and leads to assessments. In this way, the book follows a sound pedagogical logic to support scaffolding knowledge growth and pragmatic skills in the area of digital stories.

On a few occasions I faced some challenges with the interface after opening a sample. During each of these instances, I found it easiest to search for the book again and open it. The book then opened where I wanted to go next.

Grammatical Errors rating: 4

The text is grammatically sound overall.

The text is culturally inclusive. It also includes perspectives from a broad range of disciplines.

I think that this text can be useful for a variety of different purposes. I was pleasantly surprised with the professional quality of the text. It was easy to read, and I can see multiple ways that I can incorporate it into my own teaching, as a supplementary textbook or as a material to support a lesson, students' digital story efforts, or a student assignment focused on teaching through technology tools or on media literacy.

Reviewed by Ranae Hanson, Instructor, Minneapolis Community and Technical College on 5/21/18

The book gives a thorough guide to developing digital story assignments and teaching this method of researching and presenting a topic. The author offers a wide range of examples and methods for adapting the material to varying academic... read more

However, as a newcomer to digital story-making, I feel a need for more specifics about how, exactly, to make a digital story. I note the suggestion by Rebecca Goodrich, in an earlier review, that the “rudiments of importing assets and arranging them on a timeline” as well as suggestions for simple editing platforms be included in the book. When, in the Exercise 2.2 assignment, the author says that she works with a technical assistant to help students edit photos, I feel unclear how I could do this at a college where I will not have access to a technical assistant and do not have much experience editing visual material myself.

The book would be more useful to me if it gave more suggestions about how to begin teaching digital story-making in a small way, incorporating additional aspects as the instructor gains more expertise.

This book is clearly up-to-date. Because technology changes so often, the author has incorporated suggestions for how instructors can, and must, choose some new methods to learn while rejecting others. She also addresses honestly the issue of student frequently knowing more about a particular technology than the instructor does and highlights the benefits of student-to-student sharing of knowledge.

The digital format of the book makes revision for timeliness easier.

The book moves well into the future. Unless technology becomes harder to access, the relevance of this teaching technique will probably increase.

In addition, the focus on water will become increasingly relevant. Students will find the material presented engaging and essential. Students at my college will appreciate the many examples that are near to home.

The book is clear and specific. As I noted above, it is unclear only about how some editing and video composition tasks are done. Those may need further training and additional instruction. For example, samples of students’ story-boards, especially the early hand-drawn ones that the author says she had her students begin with, would be quite useful for instructors new to video production.

The text is consistent. It’s purpose is to introduce educators to digital story-telling pedagogy; it remains true to that task.

This text is written for the instructor rather than as a text for student use. Each chapter, except for Chapter Five, builds on those before it and follows a similar, welcoming organizational pattern. The assignment explanations in the appendix are useful for course development. The many excellent examples of student- and faculty-produced digital stories throughout the text would be great for students to explore; therefore, I would appreciate a “For Students” segment in the text, but students are not part of the audience the author envisioned. The challenge of adapting the text for student use is left to the instructor.

The text links from examples back to the explanatory material. It shows how digital story-telling works as well as explaining the craft. Chapter Five in out of the flow of the other chapters. It addresses ethical issues related to scarcity of resources and global injustice involved in the production of our devices and is, I believe, an essential addition to the text.

The textbook links cleanly with all videos included. Links to assignment prompts and back to the text chapters functioned smoothly.

The grammar of the text is, overall, good. Some editing of repetition, as at the beginning of Chapter Three when a quotation is repeated in full, would be helpful. I stumbled over “I trust you are as busy as me.” My old-school education would ask that to be “as I” and I still prefer that, but I admit that the grammar the author chooses here fits what students will understand.

The cultural relevance of the text is excellent. The author immediately addresses important cultural concerns—resource depletion, varying access to knowledge and experience, and the need for collaboration to overcome these challenges. As an instructor at a college that does not have access to the many technological experts who (according to some of the teacher testimonials included in the video clips) are available to come into the U of M classrooms to help students with visual and sound editing, I am aware of further injustice and begin to feel the deprivation my students may suffer because of uneven allocation of expertise as well as of resources. The text challenges me to expand my skills in order to try to reduce these digital and skill-set divides.

Reviewed by Julie Adams, Academic Skills Tutor: Digital Impact, Staffordshire University, UK on 2/1/18

This book is an excellent, quick-start guide for ways to incorporate digital storytelling into curriculum. It is aimed at teaching staff who wish to make use of digital storytelling as a new form of student assessment, but also to enhance their own teaching, although the emphasis is on the former. It is aimed at those new to the subject, but I think also has relevance to those with some experience.

Although not overly scholarly in tone, it does make some reference to learning theory and pedagogical practice, although these are not detailed. The author clearly sets the context for a need to change educational approaches given the changes in students’ digital lives outside education to be collaborative and participatory in their use of digital technology. Digital storytelling may be particularly beneficial to those students who may not excel at normal written assignments.

The book is mainly a ‘how-to’ guide which provides useful examples, assignments and assessment approaches, with plentiful examples from the author’s own practice. I liked how the author shares examples of her own experience and journey to being more engaged with using digital technology and multi-media within the classroom. The examples of student’s work and the videos of them explaining their approaches, and the teaching staff reflections I found especially useful.

One addition could be an appendix with links to online resources on video/audio editing tools - especially free ones. Those new to the area of digital storytelling may not have much experience in collecting and putting together the digital assets needed to create their story, so pointers to further guidance on this would be reassuring. This would be helpful to staff who want to create their own story, and help them to advice students.

The table of contents is helpful, but the use of subheadings within this would be beneficial. There is no index, but I am not sure this is essential – I used the search facility within the e-book when I wanted to go back and find a particular example.

The text is comprehensive in describing different types of digital storytelling. Linda is enthusiastic in her advocacy of digital storytelling, and explains the processes clearly. I found the text to be accurate with one small exception. She referred to royalty free music in Chapter 3, although does then mention Creative Commons licenses in the same sentence. Royalty free resources are not completely free, but normally involve an initial fee, although subsequent uses of the material are free.

The book is very relevant to the current educational climate. Students need to develop their digital capabilities for working and living in the digital world and digital stories are one way that they can do this. The examples of videos could be easily updated as required to keep the text more current and fresh.

I found the text clear and consistent and easy to understand. There is not too much use of jargon.

The layout, language and content seem consistent throughout the book. Chapters open with a quote giving a taste of the material covered in that chapter.

Being aimed at educators rather than students, consideration of allocating chapters for reading is not relevant. The book is easy to read and the chapters could be read separately.

Most of the book was well organised and flowed well. I would suggest that one improvement would be to include a list of all references at the end of each chapter, or the end of the book. This would make it easier to follow these up when you wanted rather than having to go back and locate the relevant link. You don’t always want to link out of a chapter while reading it.

Chapters 2, 3 and 4 are very well organised and flow logically from one to another building up the readers understanding of what digital stories are, types of these and how t assess them. Chapter 5 does not sit quite so well in the flow of the book. It covers an important issue of the environmental impact of technology, but could be the final chapter as food for thought.

Chapter 6 has good examples comparing a traditional essay with a digital story and helps to emphasise the difference digital stories can make.

The appendix is very useful to pull all of the exercises together with links back to the relevant chapters.

I tried the book in both ePub format on an iPad and in a web browser. The book has a clear layout and is very easy to read. I found that the interface on the iPad worked better, when following the links to other resources. On the web version I did struggle to get back to the book after following the links.

I did not notice any grammatical errors

To me this book has great cultural relevance and is inclusive. I think that the use of digital stories can make it easier for students to being their own cultural and lived experience to their assignments and are an excellent way for them to share these with others in a way that a traditional written assignment might not. Some of examples that Linda gives are from her situation in Minnesota, which those reading the book might not share - certainly it is not something I as a reader in the UK am familiar with! - but this does not matter as I can see how this could be adapted to other situations. Linda also makes a good case for how the use of stories can be a way to break down barriers.

This book provides a good practical guide for those new to digital storytelling, and would like to use this within the classroom and who want to introduce more creative and inclusive assignments for their students.

It would also be a useful book for trainee teachers who want to adopt new approaches.

Reviewed by Carolyn Parker, Director, Graduate Teacher Education, American University on 2/1/18

As other reviewers have pointed out, the audience of this textbook is educators, not students. This is mostly accurate. However, within the realm of teacher education, parts of the book, such as chapter three, could be used with students to help guide individual assignments, and in my case, introduce K-12 teachers on how to use digital storytelling with students. The book’s appendix provides many examples of assignments along with ideas and insights into how to develop these assignments. The book also provides a plethora of examples on youtube. The book does not include an index or a glossary.

The content seems accurate and I did not find any errors. The author’s writing and method of presentation is straightforward. Buturian supports her writing with student and instructor reflections, which describe the benefits of incorporating digital storytelling into a classroom.

The book is timely and new, with a production date of 2016. I think incorporating digital storytelling into any classroom if timely and could be included in most any classroom. In the future, the youtube videos may need to be updated, but given how the book is laid out, this should be relatively easy to do.

Buturian’s writing is straightforward and clear. Terms are explained clearly, which makes the content accessible to instructors from a diverse range of disciplines.

Buturian employs terminology consistently. Her framework if logical and organized.

The text is a great example of a modular textbook. Each chapter does build on the previous work, but each chapter could also be read separately. I like the balance of explanation and practice through examples.

The textbook is well organized and flows in a logical fashion. It was quite easy to follow Buturian’s through processes and instructions as she described how to include digital storytelling in a classroom.

The links all worked well. The provided rubrics were very informative, as were the links to youtube videos. The text was large, well-laid out, and visually appealing.

I did not find any grammatical errors.

Buturian does a great job of including a diverse range of topics and examples from different cultures. She also incorporates inclusive language.

I enjoyed reading the book. The text and the ideas around digital storytelling were very accessible. I look forward to including a digital storytelling assignment in my spring 2018 teacher preparation course.

Reviewed by Norb Thomes, Learning Systems and Services Coordinator, Winona State University on 2/1/18

The author does a nice job of covering the use of digital storytelling from concept through completion. This is a really nice recipe for creating and using storytelling as an important part of teaching and learning. The only thing I would add is some real-world examples of what the author sees as exemplars. For example, I would like to see some storyboards and scripts from successful projects.

The text was accurate, free of errors, and unbiased.

The author described the activity and its benefits nicely without getting deeply into things that would date the information. The focus was clearly on the project and its relevance to teaching and learning while steering clear of items like the proper hardware that would quickly change.

The book is clear and concise. There is little use of language that needs definition or explanation.

From start to finish, the project is laid out is a manner that is easy to follow.

Individual chapters reflect individual aspects of the project. Breaking the work into modules will not be a problem.

The book flows well with one exception. The last two chapters, "We are the Battery Human" and "Learning Through Stories," do not fully fit the digital storytelling project. "We are the Battery Human" is a very interesting read on the balance between using digital technology and the footprint it leaves in the environment. It would make a really nice stand alone paper. "Learning Through Stories" discusses how written essays can be presented in illustration. This felt like a good subject for another book, maybe geared toward art and design majors.

The use of example videos and slide shows was great. Examples were woven into the text to support exactly the concept in each chapter. Links to appendices supplied additional detail while collecting all of the most detailed material in one central spot.

No errors were found. Nice editing job overall.

I saw not cultural relevance issues.

I enjoyed reading this book. I have used videos in projects in my own courses and I feel this is a very good set of instructions for designing and implementing digital storytelling in any course.

Reviewed by Mildred Barya, Assistant Professor, UNC-Asheville on 2/1/18

This book is elaborate and comprehensive in its explanation of what Digital Storytelling is about, the different types/categories, and how as an instruction tool for teachers, has potential to transform student learning. Incorporating students' work and reflection, exercises and assessment methods add to the overall completeness of the book. There is no index/glossary but I assume that in its place is the appendix provided at the end.

Other than being an ardent advocate of Digital Storytelling (passion versus bias--we get plenty of this not only in the introduction but also in the proceeding two chapters), Buturian is passionate in her strong belief that DS transforms the learning environment (she gives good reasons how and why), is necessary and perhaps timely as well, considering that we now live in a world that is deeply influenced by digital technology. The content is accurate and error-free.

Extremely relevant not only in subject matter but also in its practicability/implementation. It is written in a way that would incorporate updates easily based either on the changing nature of DS itself or students' needs.

Clearly written, accessible and conversational in tone. It's balanced in both formal and informal approaches. That said, some parts could be condensed so that they're more concise, for instance, Chapter one could be part of the Introduction. Buturian spends a lot of time "telling" us why DS is important instead of going straight into "showing." Later she does. Examples will always win over explanations.

The text doesn't depart from its premise. This is one of its strength.

This is another strength of the book. One can focus on a small section or module easily or different sections within a chapter without losing focus.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 3

This could be revisited. For instance, Introduction and Chapter one could merge. Chapter six could come before Chapter five, since the latter is more of a concluding reflection on the product of our time, while Chapter 6 is a continuation of DS content.

The text lends itself to easy navigation, scrolling and display. Inclusion of images, charts, clips, and so on, is done well so there's no confusion going back and forth, in and out.

I found unnecessary preposition "for" in one of the sentences: Something about "...awaiting for construction." instead of awaiting construction or waiting for construction.

This is a great strength of the book. It can be used in all cultures across the world and has good examples from culturally diverse backgrounds.

This book emphasizes the power of storytelling through digital media as opposed to traditional narratives. The impact of using stories in learning instruction (the ancients knew this) so we're just returning to it. Because storytelling is the transforming heart, this book would be especially effective in introductory courses that cut across disciplines such as Languages, Social and Natural Sciences and Humanities. Students from fields such as Engineering, Literature, Composition, and so on would benefit. This book has potential to bridge the gap between arts and sciences since its effectiveness relies on acquiring and transferring multiple skills that utilize various senses when using text, image, sound and so on.

Reviewed by Rebecca Owen, Adjuct Professor, Writing, Chemeketa Community College on 6/20/17

I teach composition courses at a community college, and one of the big assignments that both the students and I grapple with every year is the research paper. This text gave me a lot of new ideas about how I might incorporate digital storytelling into my composition courses. The author of this text does an incredibly thorough job explaining her own experiences with teaching digital storytelling in the context of a class about water. Even though this is a text designed for educators, she gives many different scaffolding exercises in the glossary to help other instructors start to incorporate technology and visual imagery into their classes. The book itself is thorough and organized quite well. There are many links and sample digital stories to peruse. Each chapter begins with a quote, which is a very welcoming way to transition from one topic to the next.

The author has done a meticulous job in creating a very beautiful book. Even though I read this on my laptop, I had the experience of reading an actual print copy. There was a lot of thought put into layout and arrangement here. No errors that I noted!

This text felt very new and fresh--the author discusses ways to utilize technology in the classroom as well as how to make technology a component in research assignments for a variety of subjects. It's interesting to think about how these methods could be used in a wide range of classes--science, humanities, English, math, sociology, among others. However, in one activity, she mentions encouraging students to use regular digital cameras rather than only their smartphones. If anything, she could be a little more open to letting students use what is available to them (i.e. smartphones) since many might attend a school that doesn't have a library of recording equipment or other technology to check out.

Very clear, easy-to-follow prose. The author of this text walks the reader through her own journey with digital storytelling, and she also shares her tips on making these types of assignments accessible and less daunting for students who might be afraid of making short films. The organization and layout of this text made it very easy to read from beginning to end. She featured student examples to help explain her concepts. One of the best features of this book was how adaptable it could be for all teaching styles and subjects.

The material is given here in five chapters. Each builds on the previous chapter. There's also an epilogue where the author shares her students' digital storytelling projects to illustrate the concepts covered in the text. During each chapter, if she references a scaffolding activity, there is a link to the appendix where the full text of the scaffolding activities are linked. The book is quite consistent throughout, and the author is an encouraging and helpful guide.

This book is well-organized. Each chapter builds nicely on the next. It's not a guide for students, but it provides good support to guide instructors into incorporating digital storytelling methods into the classroom. The activities referenced in each chapter are spelled out in the appendix. This makes for a very streamlined narrative. The author anticipates the reader's questions, too, and these are addressed in each chapter. There's also a helpful summary at the end of each chapter.

This textbook is structured very logically. It moves through a definition of digital storytelling into an explanation of how to include it in the classroom. The activities given in the appendix are extremely helpful. Without those, it might have made the presentation of this material a little harder to interpret. As mentioned above, the author seems to know where the reader might have questions, and she addresses those questions in the text.

Beautiful layout and organization. I was able to view this text on my phone and laptop without disruption. It's very clear that this author had aesthetics in mind as well as organization. This made for a very pleasant and easy read.

Nothing to note, error-wise!

The author includes a chapter that discusses some of the oft-forgotten realities of tablets and other modern media: the means used to gather metals and other elements from locations like the Democratic Republic of Congo. She alerts us to the ethics of using this technology--we must be aware of how we obtain these materials or risk further harm to the people whose lives are at risk for our technological pursuits. She also mentions that a good way to combat this is by using smart technology like tablets and iPhones as educational and storytelling tools, not just a means for texting or visiting Facebook.

There are a lot of exercises and activities in this book I'd like to use in my composition courses! I have a lot of ideas about how to re-structure my research paper assignment! Thank you!

Reviewed by Alison Pelegrin, Instructor, Southeastern Louisiana University on 6/20/17

The progression of the material is intuitive. The book is clearly set up, but I do think that a more detailed Table of Contents, with links to specific parts of chapters, would be useful. read more

The progression of the material is intuitive. The book is clearly set up, but I do think that a more detailed Table of Contents, with links to specific parts of chapters, would be useful.

This text is accurate and timely. It is unbiased and the attention to storytelling implies that all experiences and backgrounds are valuable and worth preserving in this manner.

This book is up-to-date, but the nature of the subject is such that it will likely need updating--I do not consider this a flaw of the book, but the nature of its subject.

The text is quite clear--while the book seems most appropriate for instructors and perhaps upper level students, college freshmen could use the text with little help.

The text never deviates from the structure outlined in the Table of Contents and Introduction. Each chapter is similarly organized, and this makes the book easy to navigate.

The text is easy to read, but I do think that the colors used in the book need more contrast--the black text is sometimes difficult to distinguish from the blue headers. It is easy to navigate each chapter.

It is a book that would be useful to instructors more than students, as I think it encourages the design of assignments that writing students would find interesting. The topics discussed are timely and appropriate, and the assignments and rubrics provided are very helpful.

The interface is easy to navigate--the introduction explains the layout of the book, and the text does not deviate from that. Internal links in the text are quick to open.

I found no grammatical errors.

The text is culturally sensitive. By placing value on digital storytelling, the text values technologically savvy students and the skill set the bring to classroom. Rather than shaming them for their use of technology, it gives the tools they necessary to harness their voices in a way that would be helpful in many types of classroom settings.

This is an interesting and useful text. I am thinking of adding this to the reading materials for a creative writing class that I am teaching on hybrid forms in poetry and prose. It may also be relevant for a class in which students discuss and design digital humanities assignments for undergrads. Digital story telling could also be something to introduce in a composition class working on personal narratives.

Reviewed by Rebecca Goodrich, Clinical Assistant Professor, Department of Engish, Washington State University on 6/20/17

This text covers each step in developing and implementing a digital storytelling assignment, with one glaring exception. The author can't assume that readers have any experience with video or audio editing, and some of the first questions readers will raise will involve the basic nuts and bolts of collecting assets (a term I believe is useful to describe the "parts" of a digital story: photos, video clips, music, sound effects, etc.) The author should have devoted one chapter to the rudiments of importing assets and arranging them on a timeline. She could have made suggestions for simple editing platforms, many that are free to use. Even though the technology changes, those recommendations could be easily updated in the ebook. Suggestions for editing platforms include Adobe Spark, iMovie, WeVideo, Windows Movie Maker, among others.

I felt the author did a good job of describing the most common types of digital stories, the types of learning that they inculcate, how to assess student learning. I noticed that she referred to "Royalty Free" music as equivalent to legally available. That is a common misconception. Royalty Free assets are copyrighted and usually require a fee to use. Ther Royalty Free simply means that the user does not have to pay a royalty fee every time the asset appears online. The fee can be anywhere from $4 for a one-time use to several hundred dollars for an asset that will appear on a commercial website.

The text is very relevant and will be useful for the foreseeable future. It is applicable for a wide range of ages and abilities.

The text was a very quick read. I found the quotes at the beginning of each chapter cumbersome and often quoted out of context. Chapter 5 seemed out of step with the overall focus of the text. It is devoted to a fuzzy discussion of the environmental impacts of using digital devices. I didn't see that it added any information to the topic of using digital storytelling in the classroom.

I didn't notice any issues with consistency.

The text is well-organized. The smaller assignments are easy to access via links to the appendix.

Except for the Chapter 5 outlier that I've described before, I felt that the text flowed very well. The topic is introduced, the many types of stories are described, then the author outlines the process of leading students through a digital story assignment. She culminates with a brief discussion of assessing the stories, mainly by providing sample rubrics.

The text performed without difficulty. The typeface is easy to read. The text is formatted so that it is easy to read onscreen. I had no difficulty reading the text and following the links.

There are a few punctuation flaws, but I didn't make note of them. I did see that on page 115 the author uses a pull-quote that appears in a block. Because she quotes so often from other writers, I assumed that it was from an outside source, but was not properly attributed. But then, in the very next paragraph, she repeats the quote verbatim. It's repetitions and cumbersome. I guess the quote is her own words, but I don't see why they were repeated in the main text. The block quote really should be deleted for ease of reading and to avoid distraction and confusion.

Excellent. She gives great examples of using digital stories with a variety of students, on a great variety of topics. It felt very inclusive.

As a trained digital storytelling facilitator and an instructor of a university course called "Digital Storytelling" I was excited to see this text. I feel that it will be an excellent resource for teachers who want to learn how to use digital storytelling in the classroom. It is not a stand-alone text. Teachers will have to find other sources of information to learn how to teach students to edit photos, video, and music, and to assemble them into engaging, impactful digital stories.

Reviewed by Carol Patnaude, Associate Professor, Community College of Rhode Island on 4/11/17

I found the text to be very comprehensive for working in higher education and/or secondary school educators wanting to provide new learning opportunities for their students. Digital storytelling opens doors for students and faculty to present projects and assignments in an innovative way with appropriate use of technology. The text can be used in a variety of courses, is easily adaptable, specific and user friendly. The examples, assignments and resource links are practical and useful. An index would be helpful.

The text is accurate in providing information for implementation of digital storytelling. As the text is not written in the manner of a textbook it covers all key elements needed for those who are new to digital storytelling. The process and methods are clear while no errors were found. Students favor the use of learning using multi-media approaches in any aspect of the curriculum, this is a benefit to both students and teachers.

The text is relevant in that it meets the needs of students as they learn through the use of digital storytelling. Technology is here to stay. Students would prefer to be creative active learners rather than passive. The links, videos and examples can be easily updated as the need arises.

The text is easy to read, clear and consistent in its format. The examples help to connect the written information to the visual.

The text is consistent in its format and focus.

The text is organized, visually appealing and provides the right balance of text with examples, resources and links. Educators would find this text easy to use. Additional texts, reading and relevant information regarding digital storytelling could be a fine compliment for those seeking further knowledge.

I found the chapters to be arranged in a logical manner. I would suggest including resources at the end of each chapter as it would seem to be a better fit.

The text is easy to read and clear. I did not have any difficulty opening the links however in a few instances it was not easy to get back to the text page where I left off.

The text contains no grammatical errors.

The text provided relevant and culturally sensitive examples that were inclusive of language as well as samples from a diverse student population. I can easily see this approach used in higher education courses such as (but not limited to) Cultural Diversity, Sociology, Language Psychology etc.

I found the book to be a practical guide that would be useful for adding digital storytelling as a teaching tool. The rubrics and exercises can be adapted for individual use. It would be interesting to include a sample syllabus and course requirement for the reader to examine the application to digital storytelling.

Reviewed by Jiyoon Yoon, Associate Professor, University of Texas Arlington on 4/11/17

Linda successfully provided her wonderful ideas of how to integrate stories with the advanced technology with appropriate index and glossary. read more

Linda successfully provided her wonderful ideas of how to integrate stories with the advanced technology with appropriate index and glossary.

Linda clearly explained her stories with the accurate, the error-free, and unbiased writing. The student artifacts, exercises, and the evaluation rubrics, appropriate to the contents of the book, helped the readers understand better the contents.

Story-telling is the classical teaching method that most of parents and teachers have liked to used. But Linda approached the classical story-telling differently with the most advanced technology. Her direction of how to combine was easy and straightforward to be implemented in the classical teaching methods.

Linda wrote the book in lucid, accessible prose, and provided adequate context for any terminology used.

Linda consistently talked about story-telling all through the book.

Each of the chapters can be easily and readily divided into smaller reading sections.

All the topics in the chapters except Chapter 5 are presented in a logical and clear fashion. I think Chapter 5 needs to move to the introduction or the end.

The navigation was excellent with the technology! All the student examples in the middle of chapters and the exercises in the appendix were easy to be checked and gotten back to the original place.

No grammar errors.

Linda wrote this book in Minnesota providing with the artifacts of her students. The artifacts naturally reflected the culture of Minnesota. By using the culture in daily lives, Linda was telling about her story. I like the idea of using the culture. When people are within and related to their culture, they generally feel comfortable and understand things better.

I will introduce this book to my students who will be the future elementary science teachers. This book brought brilliant ideas of how to integrate literacy, social studies, and technology with science. In the past, I had the “water project” with my students to save the world water. As part of the project, my students created and posted campaign posters on campus. For our next “water project,” I will add developing their digital story-telling.

Reviewed by Nina Spiegel, Associate Professor, Portland State University on 2/15/17

This text is geared toward educators, rather than students. It is therefore not a book for use in the classroom, but a text to use to prepare assignments for a course. Its goal is to demonstrate the value of using digital storytelling in the classroom, to encourage educators to create digital storytelling assignments, and to provide examples and insights into how to develop these assignments. The book provides a thorough discussion of digital storytelling as well as an appendix that includes a variety of assignments. It also provides links to a range of useful examples on youtube. The book does not include an index or a glossary.

While I am not a specialist in digital storytelling, the content seems accurate. I did not discover any errors. The author is direct about her perspective: Buturian clearly views digital storytelling as an effective teaching tool and seeks to convince educators to try using this method. The author provides compelling arguments and reflections from students and educators on the benefits of digital storytelling assignments.

The content of the book appears up to date. A guide to developing digital storytelling in the classroom is an important topic and the book provides relevant points and examples. Depending on changes to technology, the youtube examples might need to be updated at some point in the future. It appears as though new examples would be relatively easy to input into the text.

The text is written in a clear manner. It is accessible to a variety of audiences and disciplines and well explains terms and concepts.

The text uses terminology consistently.

As mentioned above, the text is not geared toward use in the classroom, but rather is aimed for use by educators for classroom preparation. The text is organized in a coherent manner that is easily usable and accessible by educators.

The text is overall organized in a clear and coherent fashion. Chapter 5 contains reflections that might fit better in the epilogue.

The youtube links are helpful and appreciated. When I clicked on other links, such as to the mandala example or to examples in the appendix, I was not able to easily return to the original location in the text. This is an interface matter that could be improved to make the text more user friendly.

The text does not contain grammatical errors.

The text incorporates inclusive language as well as examples from different topics and cultures.

This book contains several important and helpful elements describing how to develop digital storytelling assignments. At times, it seemed repetitive in terms of its continued justification of the use of digital storytelling in the classroom, and some editing would thus have been useful. In addition, while it is helpful to see a broad range of examples, it would also be useful to directly follow a few specific courses in a more linear fashion by including the syllabus and the assignments leading up to the final digital storytelling project alongside the educator and student reflections of these assignments and courses, all in one place. While some of this material is currently located in either the text or appendix, it would also be helpful to have it organized and presented together according to syllabus and course. This could be added in this format into the appendix.

Reviewed by Krista White, Digital Humanities Librarian, Rutgers University Libraries on 2/8/17

Aimed at educators, not students, this is not comprehensive in the sense of providing background to digital storytelling and the trend toward using multimedia to teach various "literacies" - digital, media, information, visual in secondary and... read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 3 see less

The Changing Story: digital stories that participate in transforming teaching & learning is a how-to manual for instructors unfamiliar with using digital and multimedia assignments. It is a very fine, quick-start guide for incorporating digital storytelling into curriculum. The text is largely philosophical in tone, with a bent toward advocating for the methodology/practice of using digital storytelling exercises in addition to or in the place of traditional essays and tests.

The Changing Story is not a scholarly examination of the practice, and most of the literature to which the author links is illustrative in nature, rather than used to support claims of effectiveness of method as would occur with a more scholarly source. Readers should be cognizant that this is not intended as a source book with deep scholarly support and evidence to back up its pedagogical claims, despite the previous and emerging literature available on the topic in a variety of disciplines.

The text provides very useful links to resources for developing exercises and curriculum. I found the links to the DreamWorks tips for storyboarding, copyright resources and the VALUE Rubric Development Project especially useful.

Embedded links to multimedia resources related to book material is interesting and the author acknowledges that these multimedia resources are meant to be a "long tail" tool educators to use and re-use as they return to the textbook and develop their own strategies for the use of digital stories in the classroom. This model also allows for updates to the book with newer materials as needed, a well-designed innovation.

Examples of student work and faculty interviews are useful for orienting newcomers to the practice of digital storytelling. Scaffolded assignments are well-explained and can be easily adapted to individual instructor needs. The grading rubrics provided in Chapter 4 are good models on which to build or adapt for individual course purposes.

A solid, quick-start guide to incorporating digital storytelling into course curricula. It does not contain any background or history on the use of digital media in classrooms, so cannot be said to be "comprehensive." The scope is appropriate for its intended purpose.

Content Accuracy rating: 3

Accuracy is not an issue for this text, as it is a manual for implementing digital storytelling assignments in curriculum and not a traditional textbook. It does provide sound advice and solid examples of assignments for instructors unfamiliar with the processes and methods of digital storytelling. No inaccuracies were present, though it is a work that advocates for the use of digital storytelling, and is not at all unbiased. This is not a detriment in my opinion, though readers should be aware of it.

Digital storytelling is a methodology for pedagogy that has been emerging for the last few years. It will continue to be relevant with the implementation of standards such as the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy to incorporate critical thinking and various digital and research skills into curricula across the country. Edits and updates should be easy to implement as strategies and standards change.

Meant as a manual for instructors, the text is easy to read and provides excellent examples. The author defines digital storytelling well in the introductions, but many terms of art, such as "visual literacy" and "close reading" are utilized without formal definitions to help readers unfamiliar with them navigate and understand these terms.

The content of the book is generally consistent, with conceptual linkages between the more philosophical chapters (1, 2, 5, Epilogue) and the more concrete, procedural chapters (3 and 4).

Modules are set out logically. This book could be easily remixed with other sources to create a customized text.

Content in chapters 1 and 2 are thorough, but uneven in their treatment of topics and would benefit from reorganization. Chapters 3 and 4 are extremely well organized and flow logically. The whole book would have benefited from having resources listed at the end of each chapter, in addition to being individual links on which the reader must click to examine.

Interface rating: 1

Epub: Anchor links in the text work as expected, though the links in the grading rubrics do not provide the user a way to get back to the chapter text to which they correlate. The Illustrated versions of stories in the Epilogue do not work in an ePub reader (Adobe Digital Editions).

Web-based interface: Anchor links within the text need a serious overhaul. When trying to return to the text from an example of student work, the reader gets bumped to the end of the book, rather than returning to the relevant section of the chapter from which they linked. Links to specific scaffolding exercises take the reader to the beginning of the appendix, rather than to the specific exercise mentioned. "Returning to chapter3" takes the reader to the beginning of the chapter, rather than to the section of the chapter of the relevant scaffolded exercise. The illustrated stories in the Epilogue work well in hte online interface.

Text is well-written and free of grammatical errors.

As scholarship, especially in higher education, moves forward, methodologies like digital storytelling will take precedence over more traditional forms of scholarly publishing. This resource is extremely timely and will have relevance far into the future.

As someone who has been planning my own digital storytelling curriculum for a digital humanities lab attached to a literature lecture course, the advice contained here mirrored my own thinking the in the realm of scaffolded assignments to address issues of the "digital divide," as well as utilizing transparent rubrics for assessing assignments. Many of the suggested exercises and rubrics were innovative and I discovered useful ideas to incorporate into my own course.

Reviewed by Mike Mutschelknaus, English Instructor, Rochester Community and Technical College on 12/5/16

I am new to digital storytelling. I teach a lot of freshman composition at Rochester Community and Technical College. I've been teaching for a long time. I'm looking for new ways to approach my course. This book provided me with lots of online examples of digital stories. It also provided me with lots of scaffolded course assignments and exercises I can use. It has a very specific table of contents, but it doesn't have an index or glossary.

The book seems to be error-free. Obviously, Linda is a big fan of digital story-telling. If there is a bias, it's her assumption that digital story-telling is going to be the new paradigm for composition and rhetoric. I think, though, that she might be right. I watch my freshman students and my own children. They live in a digital world, so building digital stories is an important literacy skill for them.

This book is very relevant. I also think it will have longevity. Digital storytelling, in one fashion or another, is here to stay. I have a junior high daughter. I can attest that she would much rather create digital stories than write a five-page typed paper. Updates will be easy to make. There are lots of hyperlinks and connections to actual examples of student digital story assignments that can be updated as needed.

This book is written for teachers, not for students. As a teaching guide, it is very clear. I feel like I could use these techniques and implement them, at least partially, in my community college freshman composition class next year.

The book is consistent in the way that it assumes the digital storytellers will be college freshmen and busy teachers. It keeps the assignments at a straightforward level throughout the book.

The book is very modular. It's a combination of straightforward exercises, careful explanation of how to implement those exercises in the classroom, and inspiration for doing digital storytelling assignments. Each chapter does build upon the next, but each chapter could also be read separately.

The chapters are arranged in logical sequence. Linda explains what digital storytelling is, and provides some examples. She then discusses how to build assignments and how to assess those assignments. Finally, throughout the text she provides lots of student examples.

The text is clear, relatively large, and easy to read. All of the links to videos, digital stories, podcasts, etc., open easily.

The book is lucid and well-written.

The book provides examples from students from a wide variety of geographical regions and backgrounds. Linda also makes a strong argument that digital storytelling is a way to break down barriers.

Freshman composition teachers should read this book. I'm going to start incorporating elements of her assignments, one by one, into my course. I'm not going to change my entire course overnight. Over the span of a few semesters, though, I intend to transform my course with this book as a guide.

Reviewed by Laura Medina, Assistant Professor, University of New Orleans on 12/5/16

The book would be a good choice for educators considering exploring or committed to introducing digital storytelling into their pedagogy. It serves as a comprehensive introduction and overview to digital storytelling as a teaching and learning tool, as well as providing examples, assignments and assessment approaches. The table of contents and the linking within the chapters to videos, appendices and exercises are very useful. The book lacks an index, which would be an additional useful tool.

The content is accurate, no errors were found. The author's commitment to and passion for digital storytelling is clearly conveyed -- this is not an "unbiased" examination but a persuasive argument.

The overall concepts, exercises and assessment rubrics will remain relevant. Links to external media (YouTube) videos may become obsolete or need to be updated.

The prose is very well-written, clear and accessible, with very little if any jargon or technology terminology used.

The layout, language and content seem very consistent.

This is not a textbook for use by students. The purpose is to inspire and inform educators and provide specific methods for integrating digital storytelling into coursework of all subjects. For that purpose, it is well organized in terms of modularity.

Overall the book is well organized - topics are presented in a logical fashion and very helpful links are provided between chapters that have related materials. Chapter 5 "We are the Battery Human" and Epilogue "Essays" could be considered supplemental - they do not quite flow as informational tools but instead function as essays and food-for-thought.

The layout is pleasing and easy to read. The linking between chapters and external media is quite useful and well executed.

The text is very culturally sensitive and relevant.

This book is very persuasive in its advocacy of digital storytelling as a teaching and learning tool and would be very useful for any educator considering introducing digital storytelling.

Introduction
Chapter 1: What is Digital Storytelling?
Chapter 2: Types of Digital Stories
Chapter 3: Scaffolding Exercises
Chapter 4: Assessment and Evaluation
Chapter 5: “We are the Battery Human”
Chapter 6: Learning Through Stories

Ancillary Material

About the book.

The Changing Story gives you assignments, resources, and examples to use in your teaching and learning. It will also help you think of ways digital stories can be used in your teaching, and help students harness the power of visual storytelling.

About the Contributors

Linda Buturian has taught in the humanities at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis for eight years. She has also taught writing intensive courses shaped around themes of sustainability. In 2006, Buturian was awarded a leave from the university to develop curriculum around the resource of water, and received funding to travel to New Zealand to research water resource protection and sustainability models. In 2007, Linda created a freshman seminar on water that integrates both the sciences and the humanities, and gives students the opportunity to create digital stories about water resource topics. The water seminar is in its third year.

Prior to receiving her masters of arts in literature and writing from the University of Cincinnati, Buturian was the director of a community environmental organization in the Oregon Cascades, which addressed citizen-based solutions to watershed and ecosystem issues. Buturian has published essays, poetry, short stories, interviews, and articles in publications including Shouts and Whispers (Eerdmans 2006), Life in Body (Cathedral Hill Press 2006), and Utne Reader .

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Digital Story Samples
Digital Literacies and Related Literature

Sample Curriculum

Tools and Platforms
Fair Use, Copyright, and Creative Commons
More Resources

In the Liberal Arts

The “Cookbook”

The Center for Digital Storytelling released a sixty page “ Cookbook ” for teachers and students alike. The text is approachable and thorough, including the following seven chapters:

1 Stories in Our Lives………………………………………………1 2 Seven Steps of Digital Storytelling………………………..9 3 Approaches to Scripting……………………………………..25 4 Storyboarding…………………………………………………….31 5 Digitizing Story Elements …….. …………………………..36 6 Introduction to Photoshop Elements …………………44 7 Introduction to Final Cut Express………………………..60

Working Narratives

The Working Narratives collective has produced a free Strategic Guide to Storytelling for Social Change online. The guide includes sections on introductory ideas, strategies, selecting compelling content, methods, structuring, reflection, and case studies.

This short video by WeVideo is a good way to introduce students to the basic steps of planning a digital story.

Assignments

Digital storytelling assignment packet.

Click here to download a .docx copy of a complete Digital Storytelling assignment packet by Dr. Dan Trudeau . This complete assignment packet includes an overview, formatting suggestions, ethical considerations, examples of topical links to get students going, technical considerations, and a timeline scaffolding the project. The related rubric is available here . Check out other approaches to assessment on our assessment page .

Prospectus and Storyboard Instructions

This assignment prompts students to generate a thoughtful prospectus about their project, think carefully about managing their time, and produce a storyboard. Click here to download a .docx copy .

PowerPoint Template

Download this PowerPoint presentation template for creating a digital story to provide to students.

Digital Personal Narrative Assignment

This assignment asks students to create a digital story about their own educational experiences and includes steps on prewriting, scripting, editing, and reflection.

Peer Review Forms

For sample language to provide students for conducting peer review on a video, click here, and here for sample language on evaluating team member participation.

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Teaching as Storytelling: Why You Might Ditch the Syllabus & Tell a Great Story Instead

Stories are powerful and can help give meaning to your curriculum.

The start of this school year must be compelling. In 2021, the last thing students need is to be handed a list of rules, due dates, and topics. They need meaningful connections to curricular content and to one another. So, let’s turn a sleepy syllabus into an exciting story. Let’s help students see themselves as active participants in an unfolding, larger context.

Here is an example of how a seventh-grade history teacher opened her first class using storytelling:

What does it mean to be Texan? And how has this changed over time? How do nature and culture impact who you are and how you see the world? The story of Texas shows how where we live impacts how we live and that new groups bring about new ideas that often lead to conflict as well as integration and changes to worldview. We’ll explore these ideas with American Indian groups, European colonization, Mexican Independence, and finally, the Texas Revolution─with each new context further developing our understanding of human-environment interaction as well as culture, change, and identity.

And here is the way a middle school mathematics teacher framed the year ahead as a classic Hero’s Journey:

Call to Adventure : Are you ready to solve the world’s problems? Can we use mathematics to simplify complexity and find amicable solutions?

Trials and Tribulations : Reasoning through complexity is no easy task. Can we use our number sense and critical thinking to creatively communicate our ideas?

The Abyss : We will face known and unknown variables and quantities changing at different rates. We might have to adjust our perspective to find the best angle or approach to have the best chance of convincing people we can help the world.

The Return : How have you made the complex seem simple? Are you able to maximize space, establish the best investment, or tell someone their chances of winning the lottery? How will your new reasoning and wisdom help you solve the world’s problems?

In both these examples, teachers use narrative elements─character and story arc─to help students see the big picture of what they are going to learn. The benefits are many and include giving students a context, the Why of the study, an active role in the quest to know more, clarity on what’s expected of them, and a reassuring reminder that the learning process has ups and downs, and that’s more than OK.

The Call of Stories

Since the beginning of time, stories have kindled the human spirit. Stories teach us who we are and how to literally survive and thrive. Through storytelling, important information is handed down from generation to generation. Revered medical school professor and author Robert Coles examined in The Call of Stories the ways that stories help shape our imagination and morality and help us articulate the narrative of our own lives. More recently, cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham (2009) provides four reasons why stories are a motivating structure for students.

Stories are easy to comprehend because they’re a structure familiar to everyone.
Stories are engaging because they demand frequent medium-difficulty inferencing that encourages us to constantly think about their meaning.
We remember stories because they have a causal structure, and that structure helps us retain information.
Stories have emotional resonance because they humanize abstract ideas (Willingham, 2009, p. 66-75).

Tools to Stay the Course

Take a moment to remember a time when you were dizzy with overwhelm in a class, or in a formidable book passage, or facing an assignment. You probably thought something along the lines of, There is no way I’m going to get through this… It’s an awful feeling. As teachers, we can ease this anxiety by letting students know that two seemingly conflicting things are true about learning:

Learning is not linear; it occurs through a complex set of experiences that require us to question what we understand, persevere as we experience confusion or cognitive dissonance, and ultimately gain new understandings that inevitably raise new questions and uncertainties. In short, disequilibrium is part of learning, not an intellectual shortcoming.
There are structures to lean on as learners and tools that help us navigate the high seas of complex concepts. Consider how the following structures might help your students orient themselves at the outset of your course. Select one to write the story of your course. Observe how it plays out; try various structures over time to discover which ones engage learners the most.

Potential Structures for the Story of Your Course

1. chronology.

The most familiar and straightforward way to structure your course is to arrange it in chronological order. However, just because it’s familiar doesn’t mean it has to be boring! By exploring how the events of one period or movement evolve and flow into the next, you’ll be challenging students’ ability to understand how cause and effect relationships shape history, paradigms, and scientific eras. When students have the ability to place a particular method or discovery within a broader timeline, they can think more deeply and abstractly about its context. Whether we’re inferring like a historian, hypothesizing like a scientist, or composing like a journalist, the ability to trace our thinking back to a particular moment in history is a useful one.

2. Thesis/Antithesis/Synthesis

Although we believe the world is becoming increasingly complex, it’s never been a simple place. History and science are filled with competing theories and belief systems that rose to prominence, were challenged, and either replaced or synthesized into new theories that drove humanity forward. Famous historian Georg Hegel had an entire theory of history and philosophy based on such a pattern.

What we’re suggesting is certainly an over-simplification but can provide some inspiration for creating a narrative for your course. For example, each quarter, your students could explore a conceptual relationship that seems to make a concrete claim— think, systems require order and cohesion to flourish sufficiently . Your students could read books that create that theme, study empires or nation states at the height of their powers, or evaluate healthy biomes and ecosystems. Your next unit would then challenge that principle, showing students that when systems become stagnant or inflexible, they can become oppressive or break down , for example. Then your students could read texts with a similar theme, learn about the breakdown of empires, or study how human pollution is damaging various ecosystems. The overall idea is to lead students towards a clear conclusion, then challenge them by complicating their understanding with each new unit. In addition to providing an organizing logic and sequence to your course, this will help push students to always challenge their assumptions.

3. Hero’s Journey

Joseph Campbell was an anthropologist who studied and spent time with cultures all over the world. Though each culture was different in many ways, much of their stories followed a similar arc, a structure Campbell called the monomyth, and we’ve come to know as the hero’s journey. In fact, countless of our favorite movies today, from Star Wars to Moana, follow a similar structure. Due to its ubiquity, it’ll be quickly recognizable to students. Below is a quick overview of how it can provide you with a structure for your course.

The Call to Adventure : What kind of adventure or quest will your students be embarking on in your course? How can you invite them to join in and leave their comfort zone?
Trials & Tribulations: What kind of challenges will they encounter in your course? What skills will they need to succeed? What knowledge? How can your course build these competencies in such a way that students know they’ll need them to succeed on their journey?
The Abyss: Consider having students launch into a massive project or self-directed unit of study once they’ve acquired all the skills necessary. How can they use the knowledge they’ve gained thus far in your course to conquer a problem in their lives?
The Return: How can you close your year in a way that promotes student reflection and spreads the word about their work over the course of the year? The end of the year is a time for students to internalize and share what they’ve learned.

Sentence Stems for Thinking About Teaching as Storytelling

The following sentence stems can help you brainstorm the story of your course.

This course is about…  

This year we will…

We will begin by ___, then we’ll _____, and finally, we’ll ____ all in order to understand that ____.   

Try it out and see how it sets a direction for your course and a different tone for the year!

This blog is an adapted excerpt from Learning That Transfers , by Julie Stern, Krista Ferraro, Kayla Duncan, and Trevor Aleo. For more ways to engage students, check out their suite of online courses .

What are your thoughts on teaching as storytelling? Please share in the comments!

Plus, be sure to subscribe to our newsletters for more articles like this..

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Home » Tips for Teachers » What is Digital Storytelling and How Can I Use It to Help My Students?

What is Digital Storytelling and How Can I Use It to Help My Students?

Are you looking for a positive way to harness your students love of technology and help it increase their learning in the classroom? Do you want to see your students engaged as they tap into their creative side to share a story with their peers?

Luckily, you can accomplish both of these goals (and more) through the use of digital storytelling. Digital storytelling is where students create and share a narrative using different forms of technology.

I’ve seen the positive impact of using digital storytelling in the classroom, and I’d love to share more about it with you! I’ve also complied a few of my top tips for using digital storytelling in the classroom to help you get started with your students.

Keep reading; I’d love to help you see just how easy it is to integrate digital storytelling into your lessons and help you see how using digital storytelling can benefit your students.

What Is Digital Storytelling?

Digital storytelling allows students to put together their love and understanding of technology with the act of sharing a story. Students can use a combination of videos, pictures, text, narrative, music, and other sounds to share a narrative with the teacher and their classmates.

The stories students share could be fiction, but digital storytelling also lends itself nicely for sharing a personal narrative and a memorable event in a student’s life.

One of the best things about using digital storytelling in the classroom is that the exact method and procedures you utilize with your students can be flexible. You could have students work on creating a story to share independently, with a partner, or as a larger group.

Group work could give students the opportunity to rotate through and gain experience with different roles such as being the director, narrator, writer, or editor.

Digital storytelling can be used in all classroom types, including standards-based classrooms. In a standards-based classroom, you could tailor the directions for the final project to match the grade-level standards for your students.

For example, language arts standards may include having students write a narrative with a clear beginning, events, and conclusion. These components, and other related standards, could all be integrated into the assignment that is presented to students. If you would like to learn more about a standards-based classroom, you can do so here .

The Main Components of Digital Storytelling

In addition to its flexibility for different classroom types and learning objectives, digital storytelling also offers numerous benefits for students. We’ll take a look at some of those benefits in the next section.

Benefits of Digital Storytelling in the Classroom

Using digital storytelling in the classroom can deliver a lot of benefits for your students. These can include:

Fostering creativity: One of the biggest benefits associated with digital storytelling is that students have the opportunity to tap into their creativity. They have more freedom and flexibility with how they choose to share their story than they do with just a paper and pencil.
Improving technological skills: The process of creating a digital story will give students the chance to use a variety of different technological tools and programs. This experience is invaluable in preparing them for the technological future that awaits.
Giving students the opportunity to help their peers: Many students may be more technologically-proficient than others. They can use their skills to help others in the class learn how to use the various tools and programs. These students may not be the same students that excel in other academic areas, so it can give the opportunity to take more of a leadership role than they normally might.
Building better writers: Since the steps for creating a digital story follow the same progression as composing a written piece, students will also be able to improve their writing and pre-writing skills.
Helping English language learners communicate: Since English language learner can have the chance to rehearse and re-record a narrative for a digital storytelling, it may improve their English language skills and take some of the pressure off of needing to share an answer right away during class.
Encourages collaboration: Digital storytelling lends itself well to teamwork. The more chances students have to work on a team, the more they’ll be able to improve their ability to collaborate and work effectively with others.

How to Use Digital Storytelling in Your Classroom — A Complete Guide

Before you’ll be ready to dive right in and start using digital storytelling with your students, it is important to gain an understanding of how to use it in a classroom.

I’ve put together a step-by-step guide to give you some ideas on how to best start using digital storytelling in your classroom.

Step 1: Be a Film Critic

Before you begin a digital storytelling project with your students, begin by thinking about some of your favorite movies and what makes them so appealing to you. Focus on the way the movie was filmed, the way the director and writer developed each character, and other aspects.

Likewise, think about some movies you’ve seen that you didn’t enjoy. What about these movies was unappealing to you? Use this information to start to develop your own sense of which elements make an enjoyable film.

After analyzing films on your own and developing your own understanding of storytelling through film, repeat this exercise with your students. Consider watching a few short clips from well-known films and discuss them as a class. Have students share their thoughts on which techniques were (or were not) effective at making the movie enjoyable.

Step 2: Plan

After you have given students the chance to be a film critic, present them with their digital storytelling assignment.

Before they’ll be able to start using any technology, they’ll need to plan out the approach they’d like to take to convey their story. This could be done independently or as a group, depending on how you are structuring your assignment.

A Plan Will Help the Students to Complete the Assignment

The planning process may involve writing out the story, choosing images to accompany narration, planning out the props that will be needed for filming, deciding on filming locations, and more.

Step 3: Focus on Technology for Storytelling Purposes

While you may feel the need to dedicate a lot of class time to learning how to use the different technology tools students will use for filming, recording audio, and everything else they’ll be doing, keep in mind that the focus of digital storytelling should remain on sharing a narrative.

The Most Important Aspect of Digital Storytelling is Using Technology Tools

While students may need some assistance, most of the technology tools they’ll be using are intuitive, and you may be surprised by how quickly students will learn the ropes.

Step 4: Let Students Take the Lead

Remember, the point of digital storytelling is for students to share a narrative and demonstrate their creativity. While it may be tempting to place more constraints on them, try to keep the assignment as open-ended as possible to allow students’ creativity to shine through.

They Are Eager to Do Something Themselves

When you use these steps to guide you, hopefully you’ll find it easier to tackle that first digital storytelling project. While it may seem a bit overwhelming at first, digital storytelling really is an excellent way to get your students engaged with learning and help them improve their creativity, confidence, and many other skills.

Digital Storytelling Tips & Tricks

Also, be prepared for your students to pick up on using the programs more quickly than you may be able to. Their generation seems to have an almost innate knack for technology, and they may even be able to teach you a few tricks.

1. Be Prepared for Bumps in the Road

Whether it is your first time trying digital storytelling in the classroom or your twelfth, there are inevitably going to be technological difficulties and other problems that pop up. Accept that this is going to happen and prepare your students for this likelihood as well. Don’t let them get too discouraged if, for example, the segment of video they just recorded magically disappears.

Difficulties Only Help You Gain Experience

2. Allow Students to Be Creative

As we shared above, one of the main benefits of digital storytelling is that it allows students to be creative. Be sure to give your students enough freedom to experiment and explore so they can share a story in the way they want to tell it.

Digital Storytelling Helps Students to Show Their Creativity

3. Hold Students Accountable

While creativity is important, so is accountability. Many of your students may do well when given the space to be creative and take risks. However, some students may not be able to handle greater amounts of freedom as well as others. Knowing the personality of your students can help you identify which students may need a bit more support to stay focused on the task at hand.

Provide Your Students With Support While Completing the Task

4. Share Presentations

After students have had completed their digital stories, be sure to make time to allow each student to share their work with the class. This is an important way to culminate the process and provide some closure for their hard work.

In Addition, Presentations Teach Students to Be in Public

5. Celebrate Each Student’s Accomplishments

Finally, celebrate the accomplishments of each student. Compiling all the steps and using different technological tools to share a story is a big task. Help students see that you are proud of the time and effort they put into their work.

Your Support and Evaluation Are Important for Students

If you’re looking for other ways to get your students engaged and interested in language arts, consider planning a reading fair and having students create a reading fair board to demonstrate their understanding of a text. If you’d like to learn more about reading fairs and how to set up a reading fair board, you can read this article .

Examples of Digital Storytelling in the Classroom

How can you use digital storytelling in the classroom? While you may think that it is only useful for having students share either a personal narrative or a fiction story, the truth is that it can actually be used across subject areas!

There are Many Ideas for Applying the Digital Storytelling in the Classroom

Below are just a few ideas to get you started. Hopefully these will help you start to see just how flexible this tool is and help you think of other ways to integrate digital storytelling into your curriculum.

To share a narrative/creative writing story: This is probably the most obvious use for digital storytelling. Students will use multimedia tools to help them share a personal narrative or a fictional story.
To create a real-life story problem for a math concept: Student can work to create and act out a story problem related to a math concept they are learning. You could also have students add the explanation for how to solve the problem to the end of their video.
To demonstrate understanding of science concepts: You can also have students use digital storytelling to show what they have learned in a science unit. For example, they could create a story about the lifecycle of an animal they study, how water moves through the stages in the water cycle, or photosynthesis.
To create a visual poem: For this task, students can develop motions or a story to accompany a poem and help others really visual what the poet was trying to get across through the poem.
To persuade others by presenting a clear argument: This idea can work well during a persuasive writing unit. Students should create a digital story to persuade others to agree with them on a given topic (such as having a shorter school day, extra treats at lunch, or some other topic).
To recount/reenact an important historical event: After students have learned about a historical time period, they can use their knowledge to create a digital story told from the perspective of a person living during that time.
To personify an inanimate object: This is one that students could have fun with. They should choose an inanimate object, such as a book, chair, or plate, and tell a story from the perspective of that object.

Useful Resources

How to use digital storytelling in your classroom
The educational uses of digital storytelling
The effectiveness of digital storytelling in the classrooms: a comprehensive study
6 reasons you should be doing digital storytelling with your students

Final Thoughts

Digital storytelling in the classroom offers so many benefits; if you haven’t given it a try yet, I bet you’re excited to get started! Not only will your students be engaged as they are working on creating their story, but they’ll also be learning as they work!

And, is that what we all want as teachers?

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I teach second grade. I’d like to try to incorporate digital storytelling into my classroom, but I feel like my students are too young to really get a lot out of it. What are your thoughts?

I think you should definitely give it a try. You may be surprised with just how much your second graders are able to accomplish. I’d recommend starting slow and integrating just a few aspects at a time and modeling the different steps you’d like your students to take.

Thanks for the article. I would like to introduce these to my teachers.

Just finished reading your article and I have to comment, it was an absolute hoot. Your writing style is so engaging, I felt like I was on a wild goose chase with you. The picture you included were also a hoot, and I’m persuadedconvinced that you must have a photographic memory because they were so vivid. Keep it up, it’s a real trip!

Guiding Students to Use Storytelling Across the Curriculum

Teachers in any subject can have students use storytelling techniques to demonstrate learning, and these story generation strategies can help them get started.

One of the most important steps in the storytelling process is the first one: helping students decide which story to tell. This not only affects their engagement throughout the learning process but also asks them to think critically about what they value and to see the importance of paying attention to the world around them.

In this chapter, I share some of my favorite activities for developing story topics and provide advice on how to make choices about which story to tell.

You Are What You Consume: A Storytelling Audit

Our relationship to story says a lot about who we are and the kinds of stories we choose to tell. What we consider to be a “good” story is often a result of our personality, culture, age, gender, race, experience, and a variety of other traits. There are also subtle, often unrecognized factors that affect which stories we consume and how we evaluate them, such as advertising and social factors like recommendations from friends.

Helping students become aware of the types of stories they currently consume enables them to recognize personal tastes and find biases that might later affect their decisions about which stories they choose to tell and which people and information they include in their projects.

Have students keep track of stories of all kinds that they consume, either actively, like when they choose to watch a YouTube video, or passively, like hearing ads in the background. Then have them respond to these questions:

What kinds of stories do you typically like, or keep coming back to? Which ones do you avoid?
What stories do you have access to? Why?
Who or what is a gatekeeper, controlling the stories you experience? (Parents, schools, etc.?)

What might limit your ability to experience certain stories (language, time zones, age, technology, cost, vision or hearing abilities, neurodivergence, etc.)?

Then have students think about the authors of these stories:

Who created the stories you experience? Describe their demographic traits, such as gender, age, country of origin, race, etc.
What are their motivations for telling you these stories? What’s in it for them? What do they want us to do with this information?
What are some potential biases that affect which stories they tell us and what information or perspectives they choose to include?
How do they get their stories to you (social media, word of mouth, etc.) and what are the costs associated with accessing these stories (owning a mobile device, registering for a social media account, paying for a streaming service, watching ads, etc.)?

Have students discuss their reflections and debrief on what they think this might mean for their own knowledge about the world and other people. How do these insights affect how they will create and share their own stories?

Where Do Good Stories Come From?

Good story topics don’t drop out of the sky. They often require an experience or artifact to trigger an emotional or intellectual response that students can eventually develop into a story. There is no one right way to generate story ideas, but the best we can do is give students time to process and reflect on these triggering moments to turn their personal reactions into a powerful engine for learning.

Teacher- vs. student-generated topics. Honoring self-determination is key to developing students who are independent thinkers, and it helps create a culture of professionalism and respect in the classroom. Inviting students to have a say when making choices about their academic work not only helps them make personal connections to our curriculum, but it also offers opportunities for them to develop high-level critical-thinking skills. And it embraces the concept that there is more than one way to solve a problem.

A data visualization project, for example, might be created around collecting samples as part of a unit about learning scientific research methods. Student choice might mean anything from deciding which phenomenon to collect data about, determining where and how to take samples, figuring out how to choose the most relevant data set to use, and making design decisions about colors and fonts when creating the chart or graph.

Be transparent and share your goals with students so they can understand your decision-making process, including criteria for choosing story topics. Having guidelines keeps projects on track and manageable and can also serve as a creative challenge.

Topics vs. themes. Giving assignments typically means asking students to work within a defined space, often called the topic . But I find that topics tend to put external limits on how students think about a subject, such as a definition, time period, or genre. Instead, I like to challenge students with themes , which are open-ended prompts that tend to spark a more creative way to think about a subject and always lead to a more intriguing result.

While topics can be useful for developing fundamental knowledge and checking for learning, themes invite students to perceive, interpret, or understand a topic in unique ways, thereby activating higher-level thinking and allowing for more flexibility, personalization, and originality.

Open-ended themes allow intellectual flexibility in how students will make decisions about their story projects and also help them grapple with the curriculum in ways that make the most sense for them. These are some themes I’ve used before and descriptions that help students get started:

In the Shadows. What is unknown or hiding? Why are people or places marginalized? What is lurking in your heart or mind that is afraid to see the light of day? Where have we not yet traveled to or discovered?
Inside Out. Is what you seek really there? Expectations turned upside down. What’s on the surface and what’s beneath?
Not What You’d Expect. Preconceived ideas. Stereotypes. Decisions that turned out better than you thought they would. People who surprised you (in good ways). What happens when you’re wrong?

Story Generation Techniques

Great ideas don’t miraculously appear on demand while sitting in class. They are born from interactions with people, places, and ideas and when we have a mindset that is receptive to new and surprising concepts wherever and whenever they may happen.

Collecting ideas: Wonder journals and media logs. My friend and middle school science teacher Leah Lacrosse encourages her students to be curious 24-7 by having them keep Wonder Journals, a collection of ideas, questions, observations, and conversations they continually gather while at school or at home. To enhance creative writing, my cinema students keep dream journals—descriptions of dreams, observations of life, and other creative fragments that appear throughout the day.

Journals can be physical notebooks or digital ones that can capture images, sound, and video. Older students might also collect online articles and resources they encounter by adding them to a media log spreadsheet. Any of these ideas could help support a current project or become the seed of inspiration for a future one.

Idea safaris. Walking explorations of a particular place, or Idea Safaris, leverage the novelty of seeing something for the first time to spark the imagination and generate ideas for stories. Have students look for details related to your curriculum or story topic, such as sensory details for a poetry unit, sign fonts for a design project, or frequency and repetition for a math assignment. Debrief with students by having them share their findings in small groups or with the entire class. This can help validate students’ experiences and help them see the value of unique observations and perspectives of others.

While on safari, students can write or record observations and collect data, such as:

light, temperature, materials, languages, sounds
emotional reactions/feelings about these places and the people they meet
questions that come up as they make their observations

Safaris can be formally structured by providing specific routes or questions for students, or they can be informal routines that students perform regularly. If you don’t have the time or budget for a field trip, even regular experiences like the commute to and from school can be an opportunity for an Idea Safari. For example:

Take a different route to and from school. What do you notice now that you didn’t before?
Sit in a different part of the bus/train/car that you take to school. How is your view different? How are the people or places you see different than before?
Make a map of your most traveled routes around campus or the places you most often visit. Make it a point to change your route and visit other places at school you haven’t been to before.

Salons and hackathons. For centuries, artists, politicians, and intellectuals have held salons—intimate gatherings of people where they discuss topical issues. More recently, web and app developers started holding hackathons to generate solutions to bugs or develop new features. Create your own salons by inviting community members to visit classes or by hosting online webinars with authors and experts around the world via video conferencing tools.

Innovators’ compass. This design thinking tool, developed by former IDEO strategist Ela Ben-Ur, helps students clarify goals and purpose, generate ideas, and make decisions about which ideas to use. This is a great tool for developing story ideas because it centers ideas on the audience (end user), has students reflect on the current state of the community, encourages them to dream big, and provides ways to prioritize ideas based on the question: What matters most? Use it as a flexible framework at any stage of the storytelling process, from generating the main story topic, all the way down to specific choices about design or where and when to publish.

Use research to help students find their passion. Inviting students to create a story based on their research means asking them to pay attention to the world around them and helps them see the value of experts. It also honors their natural sense of curiosity by allowing them to embrace their interests and to evaluate what matters most.

As students conduct research for their projects, have them answer these questions about their findings:

What facts or information surprised you? Why is it so surprising?
What, if anything in your research, challenges what you already knew about this topic?
Out of all your findings, what matters most to you? What might matter most to other people?
How has your thinking about this topic changed now that you have this new information?

Empathy interviews. We don’t know what we don’t know, so ask someone who does. Even scientists, journalists, and businesspeople start from a place of ignorance and need help figuring out what their project should focus on and what information they might need to solve a problem.

A great place to start any story project is with empathy interviews, conversations that students have with someone knowledgeable about a topic so they can get a better sense of its history and context. These are called empathy interviews because they help us understand—or empathize with—stakeholders of a topic. They help students determine what they should research, which experts they might speak with, and potential questions to ask during interviews. They also help reveal students’ blind spots so stories can be inclusive, provide context, and be faithful to historical fact.

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How to tell a captivating story — from a wedding toast to a job interview

Audrey Nguyen

Illustration of a person manifesting a glowing universe in their hands as they tell a story, creating a world with their words. They are surrounded by four people looking on at their universe in awe.

Our lives are filled with storytelling, from the stories we tell our friends over dinner, to the ones we tell at eulogies, during toasts, at job interviews and on dates.

This acronym will help you give the perfect toast

7 tips on giving a memorable toast for any occasion

"[Stories] make us laugh and they make us feel hope, and they make us feel like it's going to be OK, [like] we're less alone," says Sarah Austin Jenness, the executive producer of The Moth , an organization and podcast dedicated to teaching and promoting the craft of storytelling. Jenness is one of the co-authors of How to Tell a Story: the Essential Guide to Memorable Storytelling from The Moth .

Book cover of "How To Tell a Story: The Essential Guide to Memorable Storytelling from The Moth."

Stories help us relate to each other and build community, say Jenness and her co-author and fellow storytelling coach, Meg Bowles. Leveling up our storytelling game can lead to more meaningful connections.

Here's their step-by-step guide on how to tell a story, from an idea to delivery:

1. Understand that a story is more than a scene or an anecdote.

Does the story you want to tell have a beginning, a middle and an end? Does it have tension? Does it show some sort of transformation? These are the basic elements that make an anecdote blossom into a full-bodied story.

When you're telling a story, you aren't just describing what happened when you walked into the coffee shop and saw your ex on a date. You're telling us how that moment felt emotionally, how you were affected, how you reacted and how you're a different person after having endured that moment.

2. Select a meaningful story.

Each of us has hundreds of stories we could tell. How do we know which one to pursue? "I always say to think back to moments in your life that really shifted you in some way," Bowles says. "Dig in to that."

When you think of a moment, ask yourself, "Why did that moment stick with me? What about that moment was important to me?"

"You start to see patterns of your story arise," says Bowles.

Big decisions are a good place to find stories; so are embarrassing moments and mistakes. Think of a time you did something but it didn't go as planned. Within these kinds of prompts you can begin to explore moments of vulnerability.

If you're not sure how or where to start mining for your own stories, here are some helpful prompts:

If your life were a movie, what's one scene you'll never forget?
What's something someone said to you that you'll never forget?
Tell us about a breakthrough moment.
Tell us about a time you had to follow your heart.
Tell us about a moment you were reunited with something you treasure.

3. Develop your story.

Once you find the story you want to tell, put it under a magnifying glass to blow it up big. Where were you (physically, mentally, emotionally) in that moment? How did it impact your life? What were the results?

Boil your story down to one sentence that helps focus what it's really about. For example, "It took a disaster for me to understand the important role my father played in our community." This will help you decide which details support your main point.

Every family has stories to tell. Here's how to document yours

Remember that in any great story you're not just sharing events that happened, you're also sharing the thoughts and feelings running through you during those events.

4. Figure out the structure.

A good rule of thumb is to start in the action of the story – this will draw people in. From there, ask yourself if you'll tell your story in chronological order, or if you'll start at the end and find your way back to the beginning, or if you want tell it in a series of flashbacks instead of a linear structure.

Don't worry about getting too fancy with the structure – often, telling a story chronologically is the best way to go. "You want to take people through the journey so they can experience what you experienced, " Bowles says.

5. Understand how you've changed by the end.

By this point, you know the moment your story is centered on, what the stakes or tensions are and how you want to tell the story. Writing the ending can be the hardest part.

"Stories in real life usually aren't tied up with a bow," Jenness says. "You just have to end the story in a different place than [where] you began."

The key to a good ending is showing the audience your transformation over the course of the story, even if it's a slight transformation. "There's the 'you' we met in the beginning and the 'you' at the end," she explains.

6. Ask yourself if you're ready to share the story.

If you're considering telling a story rooted in vulnerability or trauma, it's important to consider whether you're emotionally ready to share that story.

Here are some signs you might not be ready to tell a story publicly:

if you get stuck on one scene and aren't able to come out of it because you're reliving it – this can happen with traumatic events and could be a sign of post-traumatic stress disorder.
if it's tough to find an ending to a story, it may mean that you're still living it. You might need to "press pause" and return to the story when you've had more time to process.

7. Before you deliver the story, practice, practice and practice again – but don't memorize it.

It's natural to feel nerves before sharing a story aloud. Become very familiar with your story. Practice enough to be comfortable telling it from memory, but the Moth team recommends that you don't memorize it word for word. If you memorize it verbatim, your delivery can sound stiff and you might go blank.

"Stories are alive and they're meant to sound alive," Bowles says.

A good strategy is to really learn the words you want to use for the beginning and end of your story, but keep your notes in between as bullet points. That way you can naturally fill the gaps, but you have your most important elements well-rehearsed.

"If you go blank on stage, just think, 'What happened next?'" Jenness says. "If you realize you didn't set it up right, you can always say 'Now, what I forgot to tell you about my mom is...' or 'What you really need to know...'"

8. Remember that storytelling is not about the storyteller – it's about connection.

Want To Listen Better? Turn Down Your Thoughts And Tune In To Others

Keep it short and tight. If you're telling a story in a more interactive environment, like over dinner, remember that the purpose of storytelling is to engage with others. It's not about taking the spotlight for the entire time you're with someone. You want to offer a jumping-off point for someone else to share their own story, too.

Want to practice listening and find inspiration? Check out stories heard on The Moth .

Elise Hu is also the host of the TED Talks Daily podcast.

The podcast portion of this story was produced by Audrey Nguyen and Meghan Keane.

We'd love to hear from you. If you have a good life hack, leave us a voicemail at 202-216-9823 or email us at [email protected] . Your tip could appear in an upcoming episode.

If you love Life Kit and want more, subscribe to our newsletter .

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storytelling

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Article • 13 min read

Business Storytelling

Using stories to inspire.

By the Mind Tools Content Team

How many times have you been enthralled by a good story?

Maybe you stayed up late to read a novel that you couldn't put down, or watched a movie that you couldn't switch off? Perhaps you pushed yourself harder because you heard a story about a colleague's success, or you changed your opinion after reading a distressing story in a newspaper?

Stories can change the way we think, act and feel. They can form the foundations of an entire workplace culture, and they have the power to break down barriers and turn bad situations around. Stories can capture our imaginations, illustrate our ideas, arouse our passions, and inspire us in a way that cold, hard facts often can't.

Stories can be powerful business tools, and successful leaders use them to engage their teams. So, if you want to motivate others effectively, you need to learn how to tell a good story.

In this article, we'll look at business storytelling – we'll discuss when best to use stories, and explore what kind of story you could tell to get the results you want.

What Is Business Storytelling?

People tell business stories to communicate and connect with employees, customers, colleagues, partners, suppliers, and the media. Business stories differ from regular stories, in that you tell them with an objective, goal, or desired outcome in mind, rather than for entertainment.

When you tell a story well, it can create an intense, personal connection between your audience and your message. Effective stories can change our opinions, they can inspire us to achieve goals that we didn't think were possible, and they can show us how we can change things for the better.

Discover the three stages of good storytelling.

When to Use Stories

You can use stories to achieve a number of different goals. For example:

Sundar has just started leading a new team. His team members see him as an outsider, and they don't trust him. He tells several stories about his past leadership roles, and explains why he's enthusiastic about this new position. He also discloses personal information, such as where he grew up and what hobbies he enjoys. His honesty helps his new team to see him as a real person, not as a stranger, and they begin to open up and trust him.
Amy, a sales rep, meets with a potential client who knows little about what her organization offers. She tells a story about how one of her products helped reduce another client's supply costs by 20 percent. The new client is impressed with the product's effectiveness, and places his first order.
Elsa asks her team members to attend a workplace safety class, but they're not convinced that this is a good use of their time. She recounts a story from a recent trade journal about an employee at a rival organization who was badly injured using the same machinery that her team members use. The story convinces Elsa's team that the safety class could help prevent injuries.

Types of Stories

In her book "Whoever Tells the Best Story Wins," author Annette Simmons identifies six structures that you can use to tell business stories. Let's look at each one below.

1. "Who-I-Am" Stories

These stories explain who you are as a person. They tell others about your experiences, dreams, goals, accomplishments, failures, motivations, values, or history.

"Who-I-am" stories are essential for building trust . Tell these stories when you join a new team, or when you need to establish a connection with a stranger.

2. "Why-I-Am-Here" Stories

"Why-I-am-here" stories communicate why you're here, and their aim is to replace suspicion with trust. People want to know, "What's in it for me?" but they also want to know, "What's in it for you?" These stories explain that you don't have a hidden agenda, and that you'll both get something fair out of the situation.

For example, people may be asking themselves if you are passionate about what you do, or whether you are financially motivated? And are you here for the right or wrong reasons?

You can use "why-I-am-here" stories in fundraising, sales, and situations when you need to build trust quickly, or where you want to reassure someone that you're on a level playing field. These kinds of stories are especially appropriate for sharing with new recruits, and also serve as a useful reminder to existing team members of why you're in the business you're in.

3. Teaching Stories

Teaching stories create an experience that transforms listeners or readers. They show how a change in their behavior, perspective or skills can lead to meaningful results.

You can also use teaching stories to illustrate a situation, such as a best- or worst-case scenario.

4. Vision Stories

Vision stories inspire people and encourage them to feel hope or happiness. Here, you convince your audience that their hard work and sacrifice is worth the effort. You need to link their actions to a specific, valuable, and worthy outcome.

Use vision stories when you need to motivate people to change their behavior. They can inspire people to overcome the frustrations, obstacles, and challenges that come with change, so that they can achieve a worthwhile goal or ideal.

5. Values-in-Action Stories

Values-in-action stories reinforce the values that you want your audience to demonstrate or think about. These stories can be positive or negative. For example, you can tell stories that demonstrate integrity, compassion, and commitment, or tell ones that highlight attitudes that you don't want to see – for example, cynicism, a slapdash approach to quality, or a weak work ethic.

6. "I-Know-What-You-Are-Thinking" Stories

"I-know-what-you-are-thinking" stories allow you to address other people's objections, suspicions, questions, or concerns before they voice them. With these stories, you need to anticipate your audience's point of view, so it's best to choose a story that deals with their unspoken concerns.

When you tell this type of story, you validate the audience's perspective or worries. This shows them that you're on their side, and that you identify with their emotions. These kinds of stories are valuable in sales, negotiations, or pitches to key stakeholders . [1]

How to Tell a Persuasive Story

A good story is like a recipe – certain "ingredients" need to be part of the mix for it to be a success. All great stories have three essential elements: context, action and result.

These three elements make up the CAR framework, which Paul Smith wrote about in his book, "Lead with a Story." [2] In it, he examines how leaders can use this simple structure to tell better business stories. Let's look at each element in detail:

Smith wrote that context is the element most neglected by leaders. Without context, your story may confuse or bore your audience.

The context provides the background information that listeners or readers need to make sense of your story. It should also spark their interest and make a connection, so that they care about what you have to say.

Context needs to address four key questions:

Where and when does the story take place? – Establish the "when" and "where" of your story, and clarify whether it's fact or fiction.
Who is the main character? – This needs to be someone who your audience can connect with. In most cases, you are the main character.
What does he or she want? – Explain what your main character wants to accomplish.
Who, or what, is in the way? – Every story needs an obstacle or villain. This can be a person, an event, or a challenge.

As you think about how to tell your story, plan how you'll answer these four questions. It's also important to be authentic , especially when you tell a personal story.

Tony's company has just had the worst third quarter in its history. At the annual town hall meeting , Tony needs to boost his team members' morale, and inspire them to work harder in the fourth quarter to make up their losses.

"When I started this company 10 years ago," he begins, "I didn't know how to run a business. I figured I could do everything myself and succeed."

"I was dead wrong. I worked 15-hour days to keep up with it all. I wanted to grow the company, but I quickly realized that I didn't know how, and I couldn't do it alone."

Every great story has action: ups and downs, setbacks, conflicts, failures, and battles. The action is where we experience defeats and learn lessons.

In your story, your main character must "do" something. Ideally, he or she will experience a setback, failure, or problem along the way. Obstacles create tension and forge an important connection with your audience, because everyone experiences them daily.

Tony continues, "All of you know how stubborn I am, so I tried to go it alone. But I started to lose clients because I couldn't keep my promises. I didn't have time to bid for work, so my competitors got ahead, and I lost even more clients. This put enormous pressure on my family because I was never at home. I knew that if things continued this way, the company would go under in a matter of months, and that I might lose my family. I needed help."

At the end of your story, you reveal your main character's fate. You also need to explain, subtly, what the audience should have learned from this result. What's the moral? Why did you tell this story?

Tony wraps up his story.

"Once I realized I had to ask for help, I did. I put some major projects on hold, and started to look for great people to help me. I handpicked each of you because you're the best at what you do. You have the skills, knowledge, and experience that I lacked."

"This company is the success it is because of all of you. Every company has its ups and downs, just like I did when I first started this business. But I believe in all of you, and I believe that we will turn this problem around next month. So, let's focus on the future, and think about how we can help one another succeed."

Great storytellers know that a powerful story is only part of what inspires people to listen. Follow the tips below to become a better storyteller.

Listen – The best storytellers are also the best listeners. Brush up on your active listening skills, and give others your full attention when they tell a story.
Practice – Rehearse your story before you tell it. Even if you practice on your own, just once, in front of a mirror or video camera, this can improve your storytelling.
Create an experience – When you tell a story, you create an experience for your listeners. Appeal to all five senses: don't just dictate it to them.

Business storytelling is the art of using stories to communicate and connect with employees, customers, suppliers, partners, and anyone else involved with your organization. The purpose of business stories isn't entertainment. Rather, they have a specific goal or desired outcome.

To tell a great business story, it's important to be authentic. Use stories that tell other people more about who you are, and why you're here. And, don't be too afraid to tell stories that show failure, poor judgment, or mistakes on your part. When you're prepared to appear vulnerable in front of others, you can quickly establish trust and rapport.

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The next storytelling Program will start in April

Philipp Humm

7 storytelling activities and exercises to create an unforgettable team event.

March 21, 2022

Do you have a team-event coming up and you’re thinking, How can I make this the most fun and useful team event EVER ?

If that’s the case, I’ve got something for you. In my five years in Improv Theatre and ten years in workshop facilitation, I’ve had the chance to experience hundreds of exercises that help improve team bonding, collaboration and motivation.

While most of the exercises are incredibly fun, a few of them also teach very specific skills such as storytelling.

Here are seven storytelling activities for an unforgettable team event :

1. Story of Your Name

Overview : Each participant shares the story of how they got their names/nicknames

Objectives : Get to know each other and start feeling comfortable sharing stories

Time : 1 minute per participant

Number of participants : 5-10

Instructions :

You (the facilitator) ask participants to share how they got their names
“My parents literally opened up a dictionary and saw a random word “fin.” They thought it was cool and came up with the name Phinita. So yeah, that’s how I got my name.”
After you give an example, you can ask for a volunteer to go first
Once the first volunteer has finished his or her story, he or she can choose the next person to share the Story of Your Name
This storytelling activity is fun if it is kept short. Make sure you remind people to keep it to maximum a minute
If someone feels nervous, try to cheer them up by telling them that their story doesn’t necessarily have to be intriguing. Instead, they should be open to sharing a boring narrative
If someone has no story about their names, ask them to share one of their pets or family members – keep it flexible

2. Story Around the Circle

Overview : Participants improvise a story on a random topic without following a defined structure

Objective : Learn how to listen closely, accept each other’s ideas and opinions, and come with creative solutions

Time : 5-10 minutes

Number of participants : 3-6 people

The facilitator asks everyone to sit around in a circle
“In April 2020, Josh arrived at the Google office in NY with an envelope in his hand… ”
The facilitator then asks the next person to continue the story
Now, this person continues the story until the organiser invites the next person
The series resumes till everyone in the group has contributed to the story
Pick a random person to continue the story to keep everyone on their toes
Make sure that everyone gets enough speaking time. Feel free to interrupt people in the middle of their sentences to hand it over to the next person
A person who has already participated in the storytelling can be asked again to continue the story. This will keep people engaged until the end of the story

3. Story Exchange

Overview : Players share interesting short stories from their lives. Once they exchange the story, they move to another participant and share the story they just heard – as if it was their own

Objective : Learn how to listen very carefully, improvise a story and insert certain elements to make the story more interesting

Time : ~30-40 minutes

Number of participants : 5-10 people

Only 60-90 seconds long
From any time or facet of their lives (childhood or adulthood)
Then, he or she tells participants to look for a partner
Now, the participants have 2 minutes to share their story and 2 minutes to listen to the stories of their partners (4 minutes in total)
Whenever the participants share their stories, the partners listen and not interrupt
When the first round is over, ask everyone to find a new partner
Within the new couples, each person tells the story they just heard from their first partner
Once both partners have exchanged their stories, it’s time for the third round. Ask them to find a new partner and repeat the same process
How many rounds you choose to do depends entirely on your preferences. However, we recommend between 3-4 rounds to keep it exciting and fun
After the last round, the facilitator asks everyone to get together, form a circle, and share the story they just heard. People love hearing how their stories have evolved
If you want this activity to go smoother, it’s better to assign numbers to each participant at the beginning of the game. Later, you can announce numbers for each couple, each round
You can permit players to tweak the story slightly. It should not change the structure of the original story. The aim is to make it more exciting and not alter it entirely

Free Masterclass: 3-Step Formula To Master the Art of Storytelling

4. story seeds.

Overview : Participants craft a story, using four random, neutral sentences as input

Objective : Instil creative thinking skills and train members to make intriguing stories out of an ordinary setting

Time : 10-20 minutes

Number of participants : Variable

The facilitator comes up with four neutral sentences or asks the group members for prompts (For example: “ Phoebe ate a pizza .” “ The PC stopped working .” “ The cat chewed on the catnip .” “ The boss yelled at his employee .”)
Each participant writes a story using these four sentences
Give each participant 10 minutes to complete their stories
Ask participants to turn to the neighbour and share their stories
Alternatively, the players can share their stories with everyone
You can ask participants to share their stories without looking at their notes
You can guide them on how to enliven the story, showing them how to add emotions, surprise elements or interesting dialogues. For more information how to turn an ordinary story into a great one, check out our article on the 7 ELEMENTS OF GREAT STORYTELLING

5. Powerpoint Karaoke

Overview : Participants give a presentation on slides they’ve never seen before

Objective : Learn how to improvise and remain calm under pressure

Time : 2-3 minutes per player

Number of participants : 3-10

For this specific activity, you need to create a few slides – ideally, slides that none of the group members have seen before. You are free to use random, irrelevant slides to keep things light-hearted and fun. They can be from a past company presentation too
Invite the first volunteer to get up and start with with the first slide
Encourage the volunteer now to give a presentation on the slide with a clear call-to-action
Once the volunteer has talked for 2-3minutes, he or she can pick the next presenter
We recommend keeping the text on the slide as minimal as possible. In fact, if you want the activity to be more exciting, it’s better to go with visuals only
Before asking participants to do the exercise, it may be interesting to show participants how it’s done. For instance, you can ask a participant to pick a random slide or visual that you don’t know and, then, improvise a short speech on that slide

6. Story Spine

Overview : Participants improvise a story together, using a sentence-at-a-time to structure the story

Objective : Get familiar with a common story structure, listen closely, and accept each other’s ideas

Number of participants : 2-9 people

Once upon a time…
Every day…
But, one day…
Because of that…. (repeat three or more times)
Finally…
Ever since then…
The moral of the story is…
Ideally, you want to share the structure on-screen or in-paper, so that participants remember and refer back as needed
Assign numbers to each participant and define the order of the activity. (For instance, Jack goes first, Nora goes second, and so on)
Provide players with a random topic (e.g., “ investment banker finding enlightenment” ) and ask person 1 to start the story with “ Once upon a time… ”
Once person 1 has completed the first sentence, person 2 takes over
Once upon a time, 23 years old college graduate, Jack started his career at Goldman Sachs in London
Every day, he worked until three in the morning, spending hours and hours formatting slides and preparing excel models that no one even looked at
Until one day, he noticed a poster in the metro that said: “You only have one life. Don’t waste it!”
Because of that, Jack left the metro on the next stop even though he was still far away from work
Because of that, his manager called, asking: “Where the heck are you? You’re 5 minutes late!”
Because of that, Jack’s heart started racing, worrying that he was making a major mistake
Finally, he realised that it didn’t matter and sent his manager an email with the words: “I’m out. You can format the slides yourself!”
Ever since then, he has opened a powerpoint, living every day to the fullest
The moral of the story is to follow your heart and do things that you care about
To guide the participants properly, you can improvise a story on a random topic. You can ask the participants to give a random topic for which you will improvise a story
Remind participants that they are only supposed to cover their respective sentences and not to narrate the entire story. You’ll likely have to interrupt the one or the other participant as they start sharing a full story instead of their sentences

In case you’re looking for different story structures, one that is more relevant for business, check out our article on the 6 STEPS TO CRAFT A POWERFUL STORY

7. Colour/ Advance

Overview : Participants are asked to go into the details of their stories

Objective : Learn how breathe life into their stories and make them more intriguing

Time : 10-15 minutes

Split participants into pairs – Participants As and Participants Bs
You, then, ask each participant to come up with a story. You can make it easier for them by giving them a prompt. For instance, “ what’s the the funniest moment during your time in college ”
After a 1 minute of reflection, ask As to share their stories
As As share their stories, Bs can pause As anytime, saying “ Colour this ”. In these moments, As shall give more details about the situation. “ Colour ” symbolises any detail around the story – the landscape, the characters, the emotions, etc.
After giving As some time to elaborate on the details, Bs say “ Advance ,” and As proceed with the story’s action
Bs can do that a few times throughout the story whenever it feels appropriate
Once the story finishes or time is up (5 minute should be good), you can switch roles
You may want to demonstrate this storytelling activity with a volunteer. If you choose to do so, it’s best to play the role of storyteller to show them how to add colour

These are the 7 storytelling activities that you can try out in your next team event.

Pick one or two and see how it goes. I’m sure your team will love them.

If you’re not yet ready to facilitate these storytelling activities at your team-event or you want a professional to help, feel free to drop us a note.

Every day we are helping organisations around the world discover the power of storytelling in fun keynotes and workshops . We’d love to help you create an unforgettable team event.

P.S. If you’re looking for more fun exercises for your upcoming team event, you should check out Kat Koppett’s book Training to Imagine . Her book will give you dozens of exercises from Improvisational Theatre to help improve your team’s trust, spontaneity, storytelling and awareness.

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21 best digital storytelling examples, what are digital storytelling apps, what are the six essentials of digital storytelling, techniques to create winning digital stories, digital storytelling – the road to inciting empathy, related articles, 21 top examples of digital storytelling [make powerful stories].

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Updated on: February 14, 2024

In the field of graphic design, communication is the most important part that connects the designer to their audience. A great way for a designer to narrate a story is through a process called digital storytelling which uses a wide variety of digital multimedia to convey an important message.

List of Examples Of Digital Storytelling

In this article, we will be looking at a couple of examples of digital storytelling to understand better how it’s done and why it’s an important part of the design for the 21st century.

If you need more context about storytelling make sure to first check out what is a digital story or what is visual storytelling .

1. Partitions of India (From the BBC)

Your browser does not support the video tag.

This is one of the best examples of digital storytelling.

The story presented by the BBC uses videos, text, and images to explain the traumatic and painful partition of India and all the events that lead to it.

Using powerful images and real-time videos gets the point across and make it all very authentic.

This storytelling design uses a component called fullPage.js which allows you to create amazing one-page stories. Check it out!

2. Faeries of Serbia

Faeries of Serbia Example of Digital Storytelling

This powerful video of the Faeries of Siberia created by the students of a university in Serbia portrays the tale of faeries compellingly, making the audience interested in the tale.

This is one of the best examples of digital storytelling because it encourages the audience to take a moment to absorb the message that is being conveyed through the design.

Stuff is a phenomenal new website that puts Aotearoa on the map when it talks about the people of Aotearoa and their stories.

The thing that sets this website apart is that it uses pleasing visuals, animated gifs, and an intriguing color pallet to guide the users to stick around and read the stories.

4. Gucci With Savoir Flair

The website for Gucci with Savoir Flair has to be one of the best websites out there. It is simple, beautiful, and interactive and portrays a story about the collection from start to finish.

5. Saiga Antelopes

Saiga Antelopes - Example of Digital Storytelling

This chilling tale of the death of the antelopes in Saiga is made a hundred times more impactful with the use of digital storytelling.

The intention behind this design was to bring out empathy for the animals and understand the critical nature of the catastrophe that occurred.

Everything from the images, text, and font to the videos of the expedition makes the entire experience of this digital storytelling website informative yet devastating.

6. Footsteps of My Ancestors

Footsteps of my Ancestors - Example of Digital Storytelling

Another great example of digital storytelling is this video documentation of religion and culture by a group of students from the University of Kragujevac, Serbia.

The effective use of videos and images drives the message home and engages the audience and forces them to listen to the message.

7. Brexit Storytelling

Brexit Storytelling - Example of Digital Storytelling

One of the major events in UK history is Brexit and how it affected millions of people.

This digital storytelling site tells us all the explicit details and statistics about Brexit and makes it easy to digest the information through visuals and minimal text.

8. NBC News

NBC News - Example of Digital Storytelling

Oftentimes when we’re presented with a bunch of data, it is hard for the human mind to sort through it and remember the specific details mentioned in it.

But when the same data is presented with the help of visuals and graphs, the data is much easier to understand.

In this example of digital storytelling, the story of discrimination against Asians has been presented in such a wonderful way.

It enables the audience to connect with the stories of these individuals and empathize.

9. The Path of Exile

The Path of Exile - Example of Digital Storytelling

This video documentary made by the students of the University of Kragujevac, Serbia follows a compelling story about exile that we often read about in our history books.

The great thing about these digital stories is that it manages to convey information to the audience in a way that is interesting and easy to remember.

Related article: Great Storytelling Website Examples .

10. Offerman Woodshop

Offerman Woodshop - Example of Digital Storytelling

The human brain pays more attention to visuals than it does to text. This means that any information that is conveyed through a visual is more likely to be remembered and perceived by the human mind.

Similarly, in this example of digital storytelling, the story about the brand and its ideology has been depicted through images more than words.

It portrays the story of the brand, its ideology, and what they do without any words.

11. Imperial College, London

Imperial College London - Example of Digital Storytelling

There are multiple ways for digital storytelling to take place and one of those ways is through interactive website design.

Text on a website explaining things is great, but images and other visuals are even better. This website for Imperial College, London is proof of that.

Learn more about how to use storytelling in design and create beautiful and powerful stories.

12. BEAR 71

Bear 71 - Example of Digital Storytelling

Bear 71 is an extremely troubling story of a female grizzly bear that was constantly surveyed by the Wildlife Conservation offices for over 8 years.

This digital story recreates the experience of living through that trauma and what it was like for the grizzly bear.

It incites a feeling of sympathy and pity but also the realization of how much we neglect our wildlife.

13. Teaching America to Use the Telephone

Teaching America - Example of Digital Storytelling

This incredible video was developed to convey the message that phones can be used for more than just business.

It used a compelling narrative to drive the message of socializing and connecting with your loved ones without directly saying it in the video.

14. Toca Boca

Toca Boca - Example of Digital Storytelling

Have you ever encountered a website that explains the aesthetic of the brand within seconds of looking at the homepage?

This website for Toca Boca is one of those sites and immediately narrates the story, ideology, and aesthetic of the site without using a single word. One of the best examples of digital storytelling.

15. Utah Health University Storytelling

Utah Health University - Example of Digital Storytelling

Design is meant to evoke an emotion in the audience intended by the designer. Design storytelling makes that emotion all the more powerful, like on this website.

The Utah Health University website uses the image of a burn victim to convey the painful stories from their hospital burn unit.

It brings forth the narrative of their journey from being burned to a new life outside the hospital.

16. Spotify Harry Styles Digital Story

This 30-second video by Spotify on Harry Styles is a hilarious portrayal of how obsessed his fans are with his music, but no one more than you.

This might be one of the best examples of digital storytelling that has been done in 30 seconds with less than 50 words spoken.

17. Bryce Harper

Bryce Harper - Example of Digital Storytelling

The great thing about this website is that it uses text as the major part of the design.

However, it strategically inserts visual aids wherever the data gets complex, just like here where the article is trying to discuss the pitching strategies of Bryce Harper.

18. Modcloth

Modcloth - Example of Digital Storytelling

This website design for Modcloth instantly conveys the message that this is an online clothing website meant for women.

This is a prime example of digital storytelling in website design.

19. Clearly Gottlieb

Gottleib - Example of Digital Storytelling

This example of digital storytelling narrates the truth about healthcare law and how it affects the masses.

The website uses infographics and maps to explain how much private equity has been invested in the healthcare sector in Europe without the user having to read through the entire article.

20. Dove Reverse Selfie Storytelling

Brands have been using digital storytelling to drive up their sales for years, and Dove did the same.

In this one-minute video, the brand is trying to extend the message that being beautiful doesn’t mean using filters and photo editing tools.

21. Patagonia

Patagonia - Example of Digital Storytelling

This unique website design uses digital storytelling to market its stuff.

They use the stories from travelers and hype up the entire process of traveling and expeditions.

This way people are encouraged to partake in a journey with Patagonia’s products.

Digital Storytelling Apps are Apps that enable their users to narrate their stories compellingly. It provides them a way to combine their images, videos, text, and narrations and come up with a story that drives the message home in simple and interesting ways.

Among all the available storytelling Apps we can point out Storyboardthat, Plotagon, Buncee, Comic Life, etc.

The six essentials of storytelling are:

First-person Pronouns . Using these pronouns will make the message more authentic.
Dramatic Questions. Ask a dramatic question and then try to resolve it by the end of the storytelling.
Emotional Stories. Design your story in a way that evokes emotion in the audience.
Condensed Stories. Make your stories as condensed as you can so that the audience can look at them in one sitting.
Remove Unnecessary Details. Pace your story in a way that makes the most sense and remove all the unnecessary details.
Use Your Own Voice. Narrate your story in your voice to elevate the impact of the message.

A few techniques that can help you create impactful, winning digital stories are:

Immersion. Immerse your audience in a story by using the right images, videos, and words, where necessary
Personal Stories. Try to tell a personal story that resonates with you so that you can make it resonate with your audience as well
Suspense. Create suspense in your stories to keep the attention of your audience

Digital storytelling introduces the best way for an individual to express their story and incite emotion from their audience.

It enables the designer to use visual aids wherever it is necessary and makes the entire experience of a story much more authentic and three-dimensional.

We have offered you the best examples of digital storytelling. Now it is your time to be creative and design your own one!

15 Great StoryBrand Website Examples
StoryBrand Website Templates

Juwairiah Zia

Juwairiah Zia is a seasoned professional, a full stack developer and writer in her free time. She’s deeply immersed in various tech domains such as web and mobile application development and mentorship.

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Business storytelling: tips, ideas, and examples

by Cheryl Clemons | Resources

In this fast-paced, competitive world of business, the ability to effectively communicate and engage with your employees, customers and other stakeholders is critical. It fosters understanding, builds trust and ultimately drives success. And one powerful way to make sure your communications tactics are hitting the mark is through business storytelling.

Business storytelling is the art of using narratives to convey messages, ideas and values in a compelling manner. It goes beyond knowledge transfer or entertainment. Corporate storytelling aims to connect with the audience by appealing to their emotions, experiences, and aspirations. Real business stories engage on an emotional level AND drive specific organisational goals.

In this blog, we explore the significance of business storytelling and how organisations can use it to solve different challenges. You’ll get ideas from the essential tips and real world examples to help you kick start your business storytelling journey.

Why is business storytelling important now, more than ever?

Whether it’s conveying insights to stakeholders or an informal chat over the watercooler, stories have always played a central role in how we connect, learn and thrive at work.

Yet in today’s digital age, business storytelling has struggled to gain traction. While billions of messages are shared daily across countless channels, it can be hard to find the stories you need in the sea of endless content. But, it’s precisely those organisations that have managed to digitally unlock real work experiences who have the competitive edge.

In business, storytelling serves as a bridge between information, understanding and action. Rather than simply presenting facts and figures, stories create a connection with the audience by bringing to life real, lived experiences.

This is particularly true of employee storytelling. Hearing from leaders and coworkers first hand is one of the most powerful forms of corporate storytelling. Not only does it amplify employee voice, it’s also relatability, authentic and instils trust in the stories shared.

It’s this connection which leads to better business outcomes like increased employee engagement, better knowledge retention, improved learning outcomes, higher productivity or stronger brand loyalty. Stories are more memorable than other, often dryer, formats and as such they help achieve organisational goals more effectively.

Human beings are storytellers. Our minds are finely tuned to the emotional significance of events – so much so that making words into a story can improve retention seven-fold.

Nick shackleton-jones why the best way to engage learners is with storytelling, trainingzone, 2021.

The need for storytelling has also never been greater for the hybrid workforce . With dispersed employees, different time zones and flexible work being the norm, digital channels are not only channels of communication, they’re often a lifeline for workers. It’s how people now learn and connect because those water cooler moments aren’t happening.

The benefits of business storytelling show how vital it is:

Storytelling engages and inspires. A captivating story moves people to action. It’s this strong engagement and trigger that helps achieve your business goals. Whether you are battling upskilling and reskilling or trying to increase employee retention, engagement is your road to success.
A good story builds trust. Trust is perceived as a rare commodity for businesses these days. And, with CEOs being among the least trusted on Edelman’s Trust Barometer 2022 , it’s something businesses need to work on. Authentic stories are a great way to do this.
Business storytelling simplifies complex topics. So many concepts and ideas get buried because people don’t engage with them. A story can bring these to life in a way that’s relatable.
Storytelling levels up communication. Having open communication channels is not enough. It needs to be effective. Using structured storytelling facilitates impactful communication across departments and throughout every level of an organisation.
Business stories build connection. Culture matters more than ever. Employees who feel a sense of belonging are more likely to stay and work hard towards a common goal.

The benefits are clear. In a time when budgets are tightening and teams are expected to do more with less, organisations need tactics that deliver real business value. Smart businesses understand the power of a great story and are using them to amplify employee voice, drive learning, increase performance and motivate change.

How to use storytelling in business

Storytelling can be used across organisations and how you use storytelling in business will depend on your goals. For example, if you are struggling with recruitment, you might want to use stories to stand out from the crowd and attract the best talent.

Here are some ideas where business storytelling is already making the most impact:

Onboarding comes with a clear set of goals: time-to-competence, new starter connectivity and retention. But it’s not as simple as it sounds. Particularly when a hybrid working environment makes it hard to create a sense of connection and belonging.

This is where storytelling makes a real difference. A great story helps new starters feel connected to people, purpose and their future careers even before Day 1. Showing company culture through stories means people get a sense of how things are done ‘around here’ and paves the way for that all important trust, retention and productivity.

Talent Mobility

The employment market is constantly changing and implementing an internal mobility strategy can be one of the best tools HR and Talent teams can leverage to stay competitive. When employees look for new opportunities within the company, storytelling can highlight career paths, success stories and the development support available. This encourages people to consider moving internally instead of looking elsewhere.

Learning and Training

There is no shortage of learning content out there. In fact, L&D teams are faced with an ever growing mountain of demand for training and development. Unfortunately, just because content has been created doesn’t mean it has the desired impact. Incorporating storytelling into learning, and particularly stories in the form of user-generated content , hits the most important elements for meeting learning outcomes: engagement, scale, skills and quality.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I)

Many organisations struggle to achieve real outcomes in DE&I. Numbers alone don’t inspire us to change behaviour. People and stories do. After all, hearing stories allow us to take a different perspective and stand in someone else’s shoes which opens the door to more nuanced conversations. Storytelling is a universal human experience and helps us look through a new lens. Sharing employee experience and challenges to foster effective DE&I has the power for real change.

Early Careers

Anyone working in HR and Talent Management will tell you recruitment is a tough job, even more so when dealing with early careers . While recent figures show a moderate 3% decrease in overall graduate applications , numbers of those applying for apprenticeships have seen an increase of 17%. Yet companies are struggling with attracting and retaining candidates, as well as keeping them engaged. Business storytelling will help differentiate your early careers programmes, from recruitment through to follow on roles in the business.

Tips for Business Storytelling

Storytelling at work isn’t alway easy. But, following a few storytelling tips for business will set you on the right path:

Have a clear goal

Your storytelling campaign needs a clear, specific objective and should align closely with the business goal you’re aiming to meet. This keeps you on track to sharing the best stories. Whether it’s learning, performance or something else, success will depend on making your stories authentic, relatable and engaging. Supporting your goal with real work experiences from employees and leaders is an impactful form of storytelling for business.

Keep it engaging

How will you keep your audience engaged? Think about the best medium for your stories and your audience, whether it’s through articles, videos or presentations. Video stories, more than any other medium, will likely have the biggest impact because it’s easier to invoke an emotional connection and our brains process visual content faster .

Keep it relevant and concise

One common mistake is going into too much detail. It’s understandable as so many business topics are complex. But with 82% people struggling to codify complex experiences by themselves (according to Havard research), it’s important to keep your storytellers on track with a brief. If you’re sharing stories on video, using tools like StoryTagger help provide in-built frameworks and prompts so your storytellers stay on-point. With more complex topics, consider breaking down points into a series.

Provide context

If you’re asking people to share stories they need to know why. Being clear on why something matters increases engagement and impact. It helps storytellers understand the reason for doing something and the benefits in the context of their organisation and role. It’s important to answer the all-important ‘What’s In It For Me?’ question.

Narrative story arc

Having a clear structure with a beginning, middle, and end to your story will help maintain a logical flow so your audience can follow the narrative. People aren’t natural storytellers so having tools and technology in place for this is a must. With StoryTagger, you can curate your campaigns around a structure and key talking points. This way, storytellers can follow guidance you’ve set and the resulting stories will provide consistent value.

Build in authenticity and trust

Your stories need to be authentic and relatable to build trust. As we’ve already noted, Edelman research shows CEO’s aren’t the most trusted of voices so think about inviting people at different levels of your business to be advocates and storytellers. User-generated stories from employees build credibility with co-workers on important topics.

Don’t ignore scalability

Stories don’t have to be from one senior leader, they should be captured from across your organisation. And this can be done with the right tools. Before you start your storytelling journey, ask yourself:

How will you share your stories? Can you scale them easily? If you’re looking at storytelling videos, traditional corporate video often makes it hard to reach everyone and can have a high price tag. But user-generated content (UGC) will make a huge difference here. UGC, and particularly user-generated video (UGV) is a powerful form of storytelling and a cost-effective way to capture the stories you need.
Will scaling compromise on the quality and consistency of your stories? Telling a compelling, purposeful business story is more complex than creating a one off TikTok reel. Use technology and best practice to maintain quality and consistency at scale.
Can you use storytelling to upskill your workforce at the same time? When used effectively, business storytelling has the power to help employees develop future skills like communication, critical thinking and emotional intelligence.

Empowering your employees to be co-creators of the stories you need to share has many benefits. Find out how guided UGC video can transform your experts into inspiring content creators so you can democratise storytelling. You’ll also find more storytelling tips for business in our Storytelling At Work guide.

Get this free guide

Storytelling at work

Best examples of business storytelling

Any storytelling approach you use in your projects, campaigns or programmes will be aimed at achieving your specific goal. What does this look like in practice? To show you, we’ve rounded up five best corporate storytelling examples from our customers.

Business storytelling example

London business school: enhance learning transfer.

Societal Leaders Not Trusted - Edelman Trust Barometer 2022

Business storytelling can be an incredible tool not only for leadership development but also as a way to showcase learning transfer, as evidenced in this story from the Executive Education team at London Business School (LBS) . Their programme brought together five innovation champions from five different financial organisations to help them cascade good practice and realise their ambition plans.

LBS integrated StoryTagger into their cohort-based program to democratise learning, support personal reflection and knowledge transfer, amplifying what each participant had learned through video storytelling. Leaders shared video reflections before, during and after live learning modules as well as their innovation journey to celebrate the final graduation.

The end result was astounding. By creating impactful business stories, LBS amplified learning transfer and advocacy while building meaningful connections among participants.

“I’ve got better comms skills, a new way of seeing things and can understand people better than before. My plan is now to spread knowledge across our organisation to drive innovation.” – Programme participant

City & Guilds: Support positive change around DE&I

C&G using video elearning to celebrate IWD

We loved how City & Guilds (C&G) , a global leader in skills development, used workplace storytelling to support their IWD Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DE&I) campaign.

Using StoryTagger, C&G created several real-life video stories from employees around the world. They spoke about what International Women’s Day means to them and why it was important to celebrate. These stories not only raised awareness of the importance of diversity in the workplace, but sharing them across their social channels also shone a light on their inclusivity as an employer.

This authentic approach to DE&I resonated with diverse communities, emphasising the group’s values in an impactful way. Find out more about how C&G used storytelling in the workplace to improve engagement and an inclusive work culture .

Amazon Alexa : Build resilience and culture change for everyone

Have you ever run a Storytelling Challenge? It’s an impactful way to get your people to open up and share their most valuable insights on a theme that matters.

Amazon Alexa is a brilliant example of how this worked for a leadership programme. Michal Niezgoda, Leadership Development Senior Program Manager at Amazon Alexa, used StoryTagger to run a storytelling challenge on what it means to survive vs thrive in the workplace.

The platform provided the organisation with a simple mechanism for Amazonians to record their insights. Each storyteller then nominated a colleague to share their thoughts on Surviving Vs Thriving. Creating a ripple effect for learning and culture, Amazon Alexa was able to:

Create a more open, visible approach to leadership development
Help everyone connect to company culture, values and behaviours
Provide a mechanism for leaders to lead by example, share experiences and actionable tips to benefit everyone
Embed learning and enable people to learn from each other
Increase impact, multiplies learning transfer and ROI

But a storytelling challenge doesn’t have to be just for leaders. You can follow the same concept for everyone. Download our step-by-step model on how you can plan and run a successful workplace storytelling challenge too.

How to run a storytelling challenge

An impactful way to get people to open up and share their most valuable insights.

Webinar: Why L&D needs to rethink its approach to storytelling

TogetherCo: Connection at scale for onboarding

Together Co , a loneliness charity based in Brighton, did a brilliant job using corporate storytelling as part of their induction process. Faced with a surge in demand during the COVID-19 pandemic, they needed to rapidly onboard new volunteers at scale. Using StoryTagger, they created a series of 12 targeted onboarding videos, including a welcome video from their senior leadership team. By sharing these stories, Together Co built trust, a sense of belonging and showcased the organisation’s culture from the start. They decreased time-to-competence by 50% and helped their new volunteers feel part of something meaningful from day 1.

Read more about how this corporate storytelling example enabled Together Co to support their new volunteers.

DofE: Amplify community voice in development programme

The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award (DofE) , a charity dedicated to transforming the lives of young people, aims to reach one million participants in the next five years. Tasked with training a jaw-dropping 10,000 volunteers a year, they needed to overcome many of the typical challenges faced by a busy team when upskilling a large, dispersed population.

Real stories are great for showing people why something matters or to spread vital good practice so the DofE used storytelling to recognise the wealth of experience in their community. StoryTagger helped them capture stories, both practical and emotive, to bring key learning points to life and inspire people to get involved. Participants and volunteers shared their experiences through guided prompts, creating deep insights for digital learning. Embedded in a blended learning programme, these powerful stories made sure every volunteer is equipped to help young people transform their lives.

Check out how DofE used stories to boost learning, without losing human connection.

Final thoughts

Business storytelling is one of the most powerful tools an organisation can use. However, many businesses are yet to harness its true potential by democratising how and who can share stories. An inclusive approach to business storytelling can effectively engage employees, customers and other stakeholders with context, trust and purpose.

The possibilities for using business storytelling are both flexible and far-reaching: from onboarding and leadership development to early careers and DE&I. Real stories by real people create real impact. Use these essential tips with real-world employee storytelling examples to set your campaigns up for storytelling success.

The best way to find out how business storytelling will transform your HR, learning and comms campaigns is to see StoryTagger in action. Why not book a demo today?

Why you need an intentional strategy for curating employee-generated content

See StoryTagger at Learning Technologies | ExCel London | 17 + 18 April | See more

National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment

Mission & Vision
National Advisory Panel
NILOA Staff
Partner & Collaborating Organizations
Occasional Papers
Assessment in Practice
Case Studies
Assignment Library
Featured Assignments
Assignment Charrette
Equity Responses
Transparency Framework
Excellence in Assessment
Evidence-Based Storytelling
Featured Websites Archive
Curriculum Mapping
Learning Recognition Collaborative
Degree Qualifications Profile
Assessment Resources
Newsletters
NILOA Surveys Archive
Resources for Newcomers
LARC Assessment Modules
Questions at Hand
Audience Type

NILOA assists institutions in the practice of sharing assessment data through evidence-based narratives utilizing a collaborative, field-tested peer review process. Evidence-based storytelling, informed by the NILOA Transparency Framework, offers an innovative strategy to help institutions meet current accountability and transparency demands.

To better tell institutional assessment stories using evidence of student learning specific to institutional context and audience, NILOA’s Evidence-Based Storytelling Occasional Paper and accompanying Toolkit provides questions, tools, and resources for consideration in narrative development. Click on each banner to expand the selection and access each resource.

Evidence-Based Storytelling in Assessment Occasional Paper

In this highly anticipated occasional paper, Natasha Jankowski helps conceptualize what is meant by Evidence-Based Storytelling (EBST)—an approach used at NILOA to refine and encourage evidence-based stories in assessment. According to Jankowski, two purposes are served within this paper “to re-examine what is meant by use of assessment results and to unpack evidence-based storytelling and its connection to assessment.”

Please cite as: Jankowski, N. (2021, January). Evidence-based storytelling in assessment. (Occasional Paper No. 50). Urbana, IL: University of Illinois and Indiana University, National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment.

Evidence-Based Storytelling Toolkit

Building a Narrative via Evidence-Based Storytelling: A Toolkit for Practice is designed to help you think through various elements in the creation of a compelling, evidence-based story. It was developed through document and narrative analysis review of accreditation reports, program reviews, and annual assessment reports. In addition to the individual questions to consider when crafting a narrative, the toolkit includes resources for undertaking a group activity to peer review reports, documents, or data visualizations. This peer review process has been field-tested over the last three years and refined with different groups including assessment professionals, faculty, and institutional research staff.

Planning for Effective Communication of Assessment

Planning for Effective Communication of Assessment: A Toolkit for Practice is designed to help you effectively communicate about the value and importance of assessment. Stemming from NILOA’s work around transparency and the Evidence-Based Storytelling Toolkit, this resource helps create a plan to disseminate assessment related information as well as evidence-based narratives. Here, we introduce guiding questions and activities to develop a communications strategy.

Communicating Toolkit for Comprehensive Learner Records

Communicating Value: A Comprehensive Learner Record Toolkit is designed to help you effectively communicate the value and importance of Comprehensive Learner Records (CLR). Stemming from NILOA’s work with CLR pilot institutions, this resource provides tools to develop value propositions to make the case for the value and worth of Comprehensive Learner Records.

Examples from Institutions & Organizations

Our first institutional example for the Evidence-Based Storytelling Toolkit comes from San Jose State University .

Our second practice example comes from the Virginia Assessment Group and James Madison University .

Our third practice example comes from the Office of Community College Research & Leadership .

Learning Improvement Resources

The Learning Improvement Community , formed in 2017, is a group of assessment professionals and scholars who share a common interest in student learning improvement in higher education, with a particular focus on program and institution levels of learning improvement. The Community promotes learning improvement through a Story Project that collects stories of learning improvement, a library of examples of assessment and learning improvement stories, articles, and presentations/events. We also encourage you to submit your evidence-based stories to the Learning Improvement Community so others may learn from you!

Additional Resources

Lesley D’Souza (Director, Strategic Storytelling & Digital Engagement, Student Experience at Western University): Podcast: Secret Sauce of Storytelling, Higher Ed in Canada, #RyersonSA & Empathic Assessment
Kate McDowell (Associate Professor at the School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign): A Storytelling Scholar Blog .
Thrive Online: Western’s Virtual Community: This site is full of students telling their stories!

Privacy Overview

Microsoft Power BI Blog

Power bi april 2024 feature summary.

Welcome to the April 2024 update! Here are a few, select highlights of the many we have for Power BI. There are new updates for line enhancements, supporting folders in workspace, dynamic subscriptions for Power BI and paginated reports.

There is more to explore, please continue to read on.

Fabric Conference Day 1 Keynote is now available!

Did you miss it, or want to hear it again? We are excited to release the FabCon Day 1 Keynote to the Microsoft Fabric YouTube Channel !

If you aren’t already, be sure to subscribe to the Microsoft Fabric Channel! Check out the amazing announcements & demos from Arun, Amir, Wangui, and other awesome presenters. The Day 3 keynotes will be released later this month, and more content will be released regularly moving forward.

Make sure you check out the blog post from Arun, that highlights the announcements from FabCon you can find that here: Announcements from the Microsoft Fabric Community Conference

Earn a free Microsoft Fabric certification exam!

We are thrilled to announce the general availability of Exam DP-600 , which leads to the Microsoft Certified: Fabric Analytics Engineer Associate certification.

Microsoft Fabric’s common analytics platform is built on the instantly familiar Power BI experience , making your transition to Fabric Analytics Engineer easier. With Fabric, you can build on your prior knowledge – whether that is Power BI, SQL, or Python – and master how to enrich data for analytics in the era of AI.

To help you learn quickly and get certified, we created the Fabric Career Hub. We have curated the best free on-demand and live training, exam crams, practice tests and more .

And because the best way to learn is live, we will have free live learning sessions led by the best Microsoft Fabric experts from Apr 16 to May 8, in English and Spanish. Register now at the Learn Together page.

Also, become eligible for a free certification exam by completing the Fabric AI Skills Challenge. But hurry, the challenge only runs from March 19 – April 19 and free certs are first-come, first-served! (limit one per participant, terms and conditions apply).

Version number: v: 2.128.751.0
Date published: 4/8/24
New Visual – 100% Stacked Area Chart
Line enhancements
Enhance Q&A with Copilot-generated Linguistic Relationships

Storytelling in PowerPoint – Improved image mode in the Power BI add-in for PowerPoint

Storytelling in powerpoint – continuous slide show auto refresh, storytelling in powerpoint – auto populating the slide title.

Introducing the Fabric metadata scanning sample app
Dynamic Subscriptions for Power BI and paginated reports

Supporting Folders in workspace

New “clear barcode” action in the report footer, open power bi items in full screen mode.

New Visuals in AppSourceKPI MatrixGrowth Rate Chart by DJEENI v1.4Aimplan Comment Visual

Financial Reporting Matrix by Profitbase

Horizon chart by powerviz, drill down scatter pro by zoomcharts, image gallery, horizontal bar chart, multi-pane card 1.1.

New Visual – 100% Stacked Area Chart

Introducing the new 100% Stacked Area Chart, now available in our core visuals gallery. These visuals display the relative percentage of multiple data series in stacked areas, where the total always equals 100%. It’s perfect for showing the proportion of individual series to the whole and how they change over time. Find it in the visual gallery, on-object dialog, or format pane, right next to the Stacked Area Chart. Give it a try and share your feedback with us!

For more detailed information about this new visual, and the new line enhancements you can read our article: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/pbicorevisuals_powerbi-pbicorevisuals-activity-7183990356642775041-lsFE?utm_source=combined_share_message&utm_medium=member_desktop

Line enhancements

Take your line charts to the next level with our new line control features.

Adjust line color transparency under Lines > Colors > Transparency.
Control the color and transparency of each series by selecting them in the ‘Apply settings to’ dropdown.
Use Monotone and the new Cardinal smooth type for full control of smooth lines.
Choose from before, center, and after step lines to align your visual with your story.

Try out these new features and enhance your line charts.

Enhance Q&A with Copilot-generated Linguistic Relationships

Improving your linguistic schema is an important step in making sure that the Q&A visual can understand the wide range of questions people might ask about their data. This is why, back in September , we added a new section into the Q&A setup menu to help you add linguistic relationships to teach Q&A about words which qualify or relate your data.

But we also know that coming up with all the different words people might be using to refer to your data can take time and effort, and we’ve been working on ways to make that process easier for you! In November , we introduced a way for you to quickly generate new synonyms for the names of tables and columns in your model; this month, we’ve introduced the same functionality for linguistic relationships!

When you open a report with a Q&A visual, if you have Copilot enabled and you’ve already added synonyms, you’ll now see a banner prompting you to get relationships with Copilot as well.

Unlike with synonyms, Copilot-generated relationships will not be used to understand natural language inputs until you have approved them, so make sure you accept the ones which work for your model!

Allow Copilot to help interpret Q&A questions.

You can also now use Copilot to improve the Q&A engine’s term recognition when you ask questions! This new feature will trigger when you ask Q&A a question which uses words or phrases which Q&A doesn’t recognize, but which it detects might be referring to data entities like tables or columns. Then, Copilot will also check those unknown words or phrases to see if there is any reasonable match — and, if so, return the answer as a visual as though a suggested synonym had been applied.

This feature is not a replacement for synonyms! In fact, adding synonyms for the entities in your semantic model is even more important to create good matches, as they increase the surface area to check for similarities. It will widen the range of inputs Q&A will recognize, but like a multiplier, it will improve recognition for well-modeled data much better than it will for poorly modeled data.

This feature will be automatically enabled when you choose to get synonyms with Copilot, but you can also turn it on or off manually in the suggestion settings menu in the Synonyms tab in Q&A setup.

We’ve made saving Power BI content as an image simpler and more powerful.

First, we’ve added a new dropdown menu to the add-in’s footer. In that menu, you can choose whether you want to see live data or a snapshot. So now it is much easier to find where to switch between live data and a static image.

Second, for snapshots, you now have two options:

Public snapshot: Anyone who can view the presentation can view the image.
Snapshot: Only those who have permission to view the report in Power BI will be able to see the snapshot.

Third, we’ve disabled the default snapshot, so that the slide thumbnail doesn’t show the image by default (this also applies when you copy & paste the slide into an email for example), but only after the add-in is loaded and the required permissions have been checked.

And lastly, we honor this setting also when you open the presentation in PowerPoint for the web. You still cannot change a live view into a snapshot in PowerPoint for the web, but if you or someone else has changed the view to snapshot in the PowerPoint desktop app, this will be respected, and you will see the snapshot also in PowerPoint for the web.

PowerPoint allows you to continuously playback a presentation. This is especially useful when you want to present information in public displays without any human interaction.

If a presentation that is running continuously has slides that include the Power BI add-in, the data in the add-in might become outdated, since the add-in gets the data from Power BI when the slide is loaded, or when the user manually refreshes the data being presented.

With the new automatic refresh in slide show feature, you can set the add-in to automatically pull fresh data from Power BI while the presentation is in slide show mode, ensuring that the presentation will always show the most recent data.

Note that auto refresh only happens in slide show mode and not while you’re editing the presentation.

When you add the Power BI add-in to an empty slide that doesn’t have a title yet, the Power BI add-in is here to help. It offers you suggestions for the slide title based on the content of you add-in. The title can be the report name, the page/visual name, or both. Just select the desired option and hit Add title .

Introducing the Fabric metadata scanning sample app

We’re delighted to announce the availability of the new Fabric metadata scanning app. This sample application builds upon the metadata scanning capabilities of Fabric’s set of Admin REST APIs collectively known as the scanner APIs. This new app can be used as a reference for admins interested in utilizing the Scanner API to catalog and report on all the metadata of their organization’s Fabric items.

The Fabric metadata scanning sample app handles all the steps for calling the scanner API including authentication, parallelism, throttling, and incremental scanning. In addition, it provides a central configuration file which can be easily modified to suit the specific needs of the caller. Currently authentication is supported both by using a service principal and a delegated token.

The app is available as a Microsoft open-source project, and is open for suggestions and improvements here:

https://github.com/microsoft/Fabric-metadata-scanning/

Dynamic Subscriptions for Power BI and paginated reports

We’re pleased to announce that you can now send dynamic per recipient subscriptions to up to 1000 recipients instead of the earlier limit of 50 recipients from the data in the Power BI semantic model. For existing subscriptions, we will automatically send subscriptions up to 1000 recipients if your Power BI semantic model contains that many rows of data. You need to edit the subscription if you don’t want to automatically send subscriptions. Learn more about creating dynamic per recipient subscriptions for Power BI Reports and paginated reports .

This feature will be available in some regions as soon as today, however depending on the geography in which your Power BI tenant is located, it may take up to two weeks to appear.

The Power BI Mobile apps support folders in workspace. So, you can access items that are organized in folders inside of your workspace directly from the mobile app.

Workspace and folders are Fabric entities, which means that you can add items that are not necessarily Power BI items to a workspace. But the Power BI Mobile apps only support a subset of Power BI items. Therefore, only the Power BI item will be accessible when you are browsing the folder content from the app. If a folder contains only non-Power BI items, it will appear empty in the mobile app.

When a field in your model is marked as a barcode, you can use your mobile device camera to scan the barcodes of real objects to filter reports that are built on this model. This feature is extremely useful for retail, where you can scan the barcode on a piece of merchandise to get a report showing data about the item directly in your mobile app (for example, inventory information, product selling data, etc.).

To make it easier and more intuitive to use barcodes and based on feedback we’ve gotten from our users in stores, we’ve added a new button to the report footer that makes it a one-click action to clear any previously scanned barcode from the report’s filter.

Learn more about scanning barcode from the mobile app

We continue to simplify the experience of using the Power BI Mobile apps, always keeping in mind the frontline workers who need quick access to their content. In this monthly update we’ve made it possible to open Power BI items on full screen, so users can view their data at its max.

Opening an item on full screen is supported both for launch items and when using a universal link.

A launch item is a Power BI item (report, page, app, etc.) that the user has selected to automatically open when they open the app. Now, you can also tell the Power BI Mobile app to open this item in full screen mode.

To set a launch item to open in full screen mode, go to Settings > Launch item and enable the Open in full screen toggle.

Using an MDM tool that supports an AppConfig file, mobile device administrators can also configure a launch item to be opened in full screen mode for their users.

You can also add the query parameter? fullscreen =1 to a Power BI item’s link. When you use a link with this parameter on your mobile device, the mobile app will open the item in full screen mode.

A screenshot of a phone Description automatically generated

Visualizations

New visuals in appsource kpi matrix growth rate chart by djeeni v1.4 aimplan comment visual.

Making financial statements with a proper layout has just become easier with the latest version of the Financial Reporting Matrix.

Users are now able to specify which rows should be classified as cost-rows, which will make it easier to get the conditional formatting of variances correctly:

Et bilde som inneholder tekst, skjermbilde, programvare, nummer Automatisk generert beskrivelse

Selecting a row, and ticking “is cost” will tag the row as cost. This can be used in conditional formatting to make sure that positive variances on expenses are a bad for the result, while a positive variance on an income row is good for the result.

The new version also includes more flexibility in measuring placement and column subtotals.

Measures can be placed either:

Default (below column headers)
Above column headers

Et bilde som inneholder tekst, skjermbilde, nummer, Font Automatisk generert beskrivelse

If you have multiple fields showing on your column headers, you can now decide which of these fields you want a column subtotal for.

This is in addition to the already existing features of the Financial Reporting Matrix:

Adding custom rows
Applying company/customer specific themes
Expand/collapse columns
Conditionally hide columns
+ much more

Highlighted new features:

New Format Pane design
Measure placement – In rows
Select Column Subtotals
Row Options

Get the visual from AppSource and find more videos here !

A Horizon Chart is an advanced visual, for time-series data, revealing trends and anomalies. It displays stacked data layers, allowing users to compare multiple categories while maintaining data clarity. Horizon Charts are particularly useful to monitor and analyze complex data over time, making this a valuable visual for data analysis and decision-making.

Key Features:

Horizon Styles: Choose Natural, Linear, or Step with adjustable scaling.
Layer: Layer data by range or custom criteria. Display positive and negative values together or separately on top.
Reference Line : Highlight patterns with X-axis lines and labels.
Colors: Apply 30+ color palettes and use FX rules for dynamic coloring.
Ranking: Filter Top/Bottom N values, with “Others”.
Gridline: Add gridlines to the X and Y axis.
Custom Tooltip: Add highest, lowest, mean, and median points without additional DAX.
Themes: Save designs and share seamlessly with JSON files.

Other features included are ranking, annotation, grid view, show condition, and accessibility support.

Business Use Cases: Time-Series Data Comparison, Environmental Monitoring, Anomaly Detection

🔗 Try Horizon Chart for FREE from AppSource

📊 Check out all features of the visual: Demo file

📃 Step-by-step instructions: Documentation

💡 YouTube Video: Video Link

📍 Learn more about visuals: https://powerviz.ai/

✅ Follow Powerviz : https://lnkd.in/gN_9Sa6U

A screenshot of a screenshot of a graph Description automatically generated

ZoomCharts has just launched the latest addition to their suite of user-friendly custom visuals – Drill Down Scatter PRO . It provides all the features you would expect from a great scatter chart visual, but what sets Scatter PRO apart is the ability to easily drill down . Simply click on a data point and see all the values underneath it.

This way, you can quickly find your answers while also gaining a full understanding of where they come from. Furthermore, the visual’s UI is designed to be smooth and user-friendly for PCs and touch devices , and with cross-chart filtering you can use Scatter PRO to build incredible reports for immersive data exploration.

Main features:

Drill Down: Create a multi-level hierarchy and drill down with just a click.
Dynamic formatting : Apply custom marker colors, shapes, or images to each data point directly from data.
Trendlines: Show a linear or polynomial regression line on the chart.
Thresholds: Display up to 4 line or area thresholds on each axis.
Area Shading: Highlight up to 8 custom areas with rectangles or ellipses.

🌐 Learn more about Drill Down Scatter PRO

Documentation | ZoomCharts Website | Follow ZoomCharts on LinkedIn

A screenshot of a computer screen Description automatically generated

The Image Gallery is the first visual to be certified by Microsoft that allows for the display of high-quality images and their exportation along with other report content. There is no need to upload images to the Cloud, a CDN, or use any datasets . Simply import your images directly into the visual and share them instantly with your colleagues.

This visual boasts several impressive capabilities:

Microsoft certification ensures that the visual doesn’t interact with external services , ensuring that your images are securely stored and encrypted within the report, consistent with your report’s sensitivity settings.
Automatically saves your selected image in preview mode , allowing your colleagues to view the exact image you have highlighted.
Images can be uploaded or removed exclusively in Edit Mode. Users in View Mode can only view the images.
The visual is compatible with Power BI’s export functionality to PDF and PowerPoint.

A screenshot of a computer Description automatically generated

LINK: https://appsource.microsoft.com/en-us/product/power-bi-visuals/pbicraft1694192953706.imagegallery?tab=Overview

A space-saving horizontal bar chart designed with category labels placed inside the bars for clarity

This horizontal bar chart serves as an efficient filter to navigate through your data more effectively, optimizing space by placing the category labels within the bars themselves.

Adjustable Bar Thickness and Spacing: Offers the flexibility to adjust the thickness of the bars and the spacing between them. This allows for optimal use of space and improves readability, especially when dealing with large datasets.
Tooltip Details on Hover: Displays detailed information about each category when the user hovers over a bar. This feature provides additional context and insights without cluttering the visual.
Data-Driven Category Labels: Automatically updates category labels based on the data source. This ensures that the chart remains accurate and up to date, reflecting any changes in the underlying data.
Support for Hierarchical Data: Allows users to drill down into hierarchical categories within the chart. This functionality enables a more detailed data analysis without leaving the context of the initial visual.
Export Options: Offers the ability to export the chart as an image or PDF, facilitating easy sharing and reporting outside of Power BI.

Link: https://appsource.microsoft.com/en-us/product/power-bi-visuals/pbicraft1694192953706.horizontalbarchart?tab=Overview

Introducing the “ Trends ” visual for Power BI – your gateway to leveraging Google Trends data for strategic business analysis. This innovative visual tool allows you to compare brand popularity, monitor market trends, and gain insights into consumer search behaviors directly within your Power BI environment.

With Trends visual, you can:

Analyze the ebb and flow of brand interest over time to identify market opportunities and competitive threats.
Compare the popularity of products to inform marketing strategies and product development decisions.
Understand seasonal trends to optimize your marketing campaigns and inventory planning.

Securely integrated and easy to use, “Trends” transforms your Power BI reports into a dynamic analysis tool, offering a comprehensive view of the market landscape. Dive into data-driven decision-making with “Trends” and stay one step ahead in the competitive business environment.

New visual: Multi-pane Card can be used to group and show data in multiple collapsible panes in Power BI reports. It is an alternative to multi-row card visual, but it can combine columns into a few groups and put each group’s data in each pane. It is suitable to show data in detail with a reduced number of report pages.

Screenshot 1 (Show data in 3 groups: Area and Population, GDP and Foreign Exchange Reserves for countries)

Data can be sorted by a specified column and numbers can be converted to a human readable string. You can also set up how many rows that you want to show on the card. Using these features, it will be very easy to show “Top 10 best performing stores” or “Top 10 worst performing stores” for retail businesses.

Screenshot2 (Combined with drilldown choropleth map to show the top 10 richest countries by GDP per capita for each continent and subregion)

You can go to Microsoft AppSource( https://appsource.microsoft.com/en-us/product/power-bi-visuals/mylocsinc1648311649136.tcard )to download and try it.

To learn more on how to use it, please read tutorials ( https://www.mylocs.ca/tutorials.html#multi-pane-card ).

Introducing Copilot pane in Power BI Desktop

Earlier this year, we announced preview of Copilot for all customers with Premium/Fabric capacity in Power BI web . We’re thrilled to share that the same Copilot experience for report creation is now available for preview in Power BI Desktop. With our current preview, users can create reports faster and easier in the Power BI Desktop experience. You can now open the Copilot pane in report view and ask Copilot to:

Create a report page – Copilot will create an entire report page for you by identifying the tables, fields, measures, and charts that would help you get started.
Summarize a semantic model – Copilot will help you understand your Power BI semantic model by summarizing the data in your model.
Suggest a topic – Copilot will suggest topics for your report pages.

Click here to learn more about how to get started.

That is all for this month! Please continue sending us your feedback and do not forget to vote for other features that you would like to see in Power BI! We hope that you enjoy the update! If you installed Power BI Desktop from the Microsoft Store, please leave us a review .

Also, don’t forget to vote on your favorite feature this month on our community website.

As always, keep voting on Ideas to help us determine what to build next. We are looking forward to hearing from you!

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IMAGES

STORYTELLING Lesson Plan
5. Storytelling Script
Storytelling: How to Create Clear and Memorable Business Stories
Telling a story lesson plan
Seminar Assignment
The Ultimate Guide to Storytelling

VIDEO

MWSU SAAC Video Story
Assignment 3 Digital storytelling
Digital storytelling assignment 2
Speech Storytelling Assignment
Multimedia Storytelling Group Assignment
Digital Storytelling Assignment 1 :The story about my career

COMMENTS

5 Digital Storytelling Assignments in the Classroom
The following 5 examples of digital storytelling in the classroom demonstrate that it can be used for its surface purpose: to develop narratives or practice a foreign language, as well as in content courses to present and discuss abstract concepts and material. 1. Creative writing assignment.
An Exercise in Digital Storytelling
Maskot / Alamy. To engage my 11th-grade English students during the 2020-21 school year, I created a digital storytelling unit. Whether they attended school in person or remotely, it was a success. Students were able to explore various frames of reference, identify a personal story to share using digital media, and experience empathy ...
Storytelling Guide
Incorporate storytelling into short assignments by using these two standards-based examples (which include a rubric and ballot). ... Storytelling Guide Activity Ideas. This resource provides an example of a longer 2-3 week class project showcasing student identity through storytelling. Resource 16: Storytelling Rubric. Category: Storytelling ...
The Changing Story: digital stories that participate in transforming
The Changing Story gives you assignments, resources, and examples to use in your teaching and learning. It will also help you think of ways digital stories can be used in your teaching, and help students harness the power of visual storytelling. ... But to emphasize how a digital storytelling assignment could require research and personal ...
Sample Curriculum
This short video by WeVideo is a good way to introduce students to the basic steps of planning a digital story.. Assignments Digital Storytelling Assignment Packet. Click here to download a .docx copy of a complete Digital Storytelling assignment packet by Dr. Dan Trudeau.This complete assignment packet includes an overview, formatting suggestions, ethical considerations, examples of topical ...
Teaching as Storytelling: Using Narrative to Shape Your Curriculum
Teaching as Storytelling: Why You Might Ditch the Syllabus & Tell a Great Story Instead. Stories are powerful and can help give meaning to your curriculum. The start of this school year must be compelling. In 2021, the last thing students need is to be handed a list of rules, due dates, and topics. They need meaningful connections to curricular ...
Using Digital Storytelling in the Classroom
Step 4: Let Students Take the Lead. Remember, the point of digital storytelling is for students to share a narrative and demonstrate their creativity. While it may be tempting to place more constraints on them, try to keep the assignment as open-ended as possible to allow students' creativity to shine through.
5 creative storytelling projects recommended by teachers, for everyone
Aim for "big thoughts, small steps." —Bojana Golubovic, educator, Serbia. 5. Build a culture in which everyone's story matters. Storytelling can be a powerful tool for change. In Minnesota, TED-Ed Innovative Educator Susan Herder led a video storytelling project to create a more inclusive school culture. After interviewing a diverse ...
Storytelling as a Framework for Learning
One of the most important steps in the storytelling process is the first one: helping students decide which story to tell. ... A data visualization project, for example, might be created around collecting samples as part of a unit about learning scientific research methods. ... Giving assignments typically means asking students to work within a ...
PDF Digital Storytelling
Properly constructed with clear rubrics, digital storytelling assignments are every bit as academically rigorous - and involve just as much "writing" as term paper assignments. For example, students in the English Department's Film Studies class at Hamilton College are asked to develop "digital stories" about their course experience.
PDF CONNECT WITH STORYTELLING
The following is a list of competencies that you will learn and practice in this project. Apply storytelling techniques and descriptive skills to make the presentation relatable and interesting. Understand the elements of a good story. Use vivid descriptions and appropriate tone to tell an engaging story. Create stories that have the desired emotional impact on the audience.
10 Storytelling Ideas to Inspire Magical Storytelling and Narrative
The first person begins by saying a single word. For example: "there". Whoever is next in the circle says another single word that makes sense following the previous word. For example: "was". Continue around the circle with each person saying a single word with the collective aim of telling a coherent story.
PDF Designing a Digital Story Assignment for Basic Writers Using the ...
storytelling assignments effectively into the Basic Writing classroom. In a previous study, we implemented Bernard Robin and Sara McNeil's instruc-tional design framework, ADDIE (analyze, design, develop, implement, and evaluate), to design and evaluate a digital storytelling assignment in our writing class with ESL learners (Sepp and Bandi-Rao).
How to tell a captivating story
You might need to "press pause" and return to the story when you've had more time to process. 7. Before you deliver the story, practice, practice and practice again - but don't memorize it. It's ...
PDF Exploring Individual and Collaborative Storytelling in an Introductory
In summary, we contribute: three storytelling assignments for individual, collaborative, and collective storytelling in creative coding class. mixed-methods analysis of students' submissions, experiences, and assessment of the assignments. discussion of benefits and challenges with storytelling assign-ments in text-based creative coding ...
Business Storytelling
Business storytelling is the art of using stories to communicate and connect with employees, customers, suppliers, partners, and anyone else involved with your organization. The purpose of business stories isn't entertainment. Rather, they have a specific goal or desired outcome. To tell a great business story, it's important to be authentic.
How to Tell a Story Effectively: 7 Storytelling Tips
Storytelling allowed people to make sense of the world and derive deeper meaning from their lives since the beginning of human history. The techniques and delivery methods of good storytelling may have changed since then, but the power of storytelling to move us and provoke a deeper sense of connection between us has stayed consistent. As a writer, developing your storytelling skills and ...
7 Storytelling Activities to Create an Unforgettable Team Event
Here are seven storytelling activities for an unforgettable team event: 1. Story of Your Name. Overview: Each participant shares the story of how they got their names/nicknames. Objectives: Get to know each other and start feeling comfortable sharing stories. Time: 1 minute per participant.
21 Top Examples of Digital Storytelling [Make Powerful Stories]
Another great example of digital storytelling is this video documentation of religion and culture by a group of students from the University of Kragujevac, Serbia. The effective use of videos and images drives the message home and engages the audience and forces them to listen to the message. 7. Brexit Storytelling.
Business storytelling: tips, ideas, and examples
Business storytelling is the art of using narratives to convey messages, ideas and values in a compelling manner. It goes beyond knowledge transfer or entertainment. Corporate storytelling aims to connect with the audience by appealing to their emotions, experiences, and aspirations.
40 Examples of Storytelling
The following are common storytelling techniques. Plot. An interesting sequence of events. Narrative Thread. A recurring theme that ties different parts of a plot together. Foreshadowing. Hints or clues about what will happen in a story. Plot Twists. An unexpected direction or outcome in a story.
PDF Advantages and disadvantages of digital storytelling assignments ...
storytelling assignments in EFL education in terms of learning motivation Naoko Kasami1 Abstract. Digital storytelling is an educational practice which has attracted the attention of many experts. However, there has been little research on the disadvantages of digital storytelling assignments from the students' perspectives
Evidence-Based Storytelling
NILOA assists institutions in the practice of sharing assessment data through evidence-based narratives utilizing a collaborative, field-tested peer review process. Evidence-based storytelling, informed by the NILOA Transparency Framework, offers an innovative strategy to help institutions meet current accountability and transparency demands.
ADMINISTRATIVE ANALYST I-IV ASSIGNMENT EXAMPLES
CITY OF LONG BEACH - ADMINISTRATIVE ANALYST I-IV ASSIGNMENT EXAMPLES: DEPARTMENT PERSONNEL ADMINISTRATION Summary á The Administrative Analyst position may involve assisting with personnel management tasks such as recruitment and selection â onboarding, training, and employee relations â performance management and may assist with
Power BI April 2024 Feature Summary
Storytelling in PowerPoint - Continuous slide show auto refresh. PowerPoint allows you to continuously playback a presentation. This is especially useful when you want to present information in public displays without any human interaction. ... The Fabric metadata scanning sample app handles all the steps for calling the scanner API including ...

5 Digital Storytelling Assignments in the Classroom

1. Creative writing assignment

Suggested requirements:

iSpring Suite

2. Science assignment

Suggested requirements:

3. Math or Statistics assignment

4. History/anthropology/culture compare/contrast assignment

Suggested requirements:

5. Argument assignment

Leaders That Listen Public Speaking Curriculum

Resource 1: Storytelling: The Identity of a Leader

Resource 2: Making Storytelling Inclusive and Equitable

Resource 3: Stories About Stories: A Message from the Author

Resource 4: Getting Stories Started: For Educators and Facilitators

Resource 5: Getting Stories Started: For Speakers

Resource 6: Getting Stories Started: For Listeners

Resource 7: Story Warm-Ups

Resource 8: Storytelling Cheat Sheet: Tips for Language and Delivery

Resource 9: Storytelling Speech Template

Resource 10: Self-Advocacy Story

Resource 11: Sharing the Stories of Others

Resource 12: 7 Tips for Talking about Yourself in Interviews

Resource 13: Small Steps for Educators: Using Storytelling in Schools

Resource 14: Activity Examples: Facing the Fear Podcasts and StorySlams

Resource 15: Class Project: “Me As a Speaker” Identity Performance

Resource 16: Storytelling Rubric

Resource 17: Community Change Idea: Youth Voice Podcast

Resource 18: Project Sketcher

The Changing Story: digital stories that participate in transforming teaching & learning

Formats Available

Table of Contents

Ancillary Material

About the Contributors

Contribute to this Page

Sample Curriculum

The “Cookbook”

Working Narratives

Assignments

Prospectus and Storyboard Instructions

PowerPoint Template

Digital Personal Narrative Assignment

Peer Review Forms

Teaching as Storytelling: Why You Might Ditch the Syllabus & Tell a Great Story Instead

Here is an example of how a seventh-grade history teacher opened her first class using storytelling:

And here is the way a middle school mathematics teacher framed the year ahead as a classic Hero’s Journey:

The Call of Stories

Tools to Stay the Course

Potential Structures for the Story of Your Course

2. Thesis/Antithesis/Synthesis

3. Hero’s Journey

Sentence Stems for Thinking About Teaching as Storytelling

What are your thoughts on teaching as storytelling? Please share in the comments!

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Benefits of Digital Storytelling in the Classroom

How to Use Digital Storytelling in Your Classroom — A Complete Guide

Step 1: Be a Film Critic

Step 2: Plan

Step 3: Focus on Technology for Storytelling Purposes

Step 4: Let Students Take the Lead

Digital Storytelling Tips & Tricks

1. Be Prepared for Bumps in the Road

2. Allow Students to Be Creative

3. Hold Students Accountable

4. Share Presentations

5. Celebrate Each Student’s Accomplishments

Examples of Digital Storytelling in the Classroom

Useful Resources

Final Thoughts

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

Guiding Students to Use Storytelling Across the Curriculum

You Are What You Consume: A Storytelling Audit

Where Do Good Stories Come From?

Story Generation Techniques

How to tell a captivating story — from a wedding toast to a job interview

7 tips on giving a memorable toast for any occasion

1. Understand that a story is more than a scene or an anecdote.

Free Storytelling Assessment